


Devil in the Details

by Accidental_Ducky



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Amoral Stiles Stilinski, Amorality, BAMF Erica Reyes, Dark Derek Hale, Dark Stiles Stilinski, Erica isn't taking anyone's shit, F/M, House on Haunted Hill AU, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, POV Multiple, Peter Hale is a Ghost, She'll kick Derek's ass, She'll kick a ghost's ass, she'll kick her own ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-16 06:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17544374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidental_Ducky/pseuds/Accidental_Ducky
Summary: “So we’ll split up.”“Baby,” Boyd says, taking her arm in a gentle hold,” that is the single whitest sentence to ever leave your mouth. Splitting up to search for a crazed murderer with no moral compass is a job better left to the police. I say we go upstairs, barricade the basement door closed and hangout in the lobby until help shows up.”“Derek found a way to break out of a sealed chamber and you think shoving a desk in front of a wooden door will keep him from using our skin as lampshades?”“I never should have let you watch American Horror Story. Our lives have just gone downhill since then.” Boyd runs a hand over his mouth, scratching absently at the stubble along his jaw before heaving out a sigh. “Fine, we’ll go look for Hale, but we’re sticking together. I’m not about to be the token black guy that gets butchered in some kind of cheesy nineties horror flick.”





	1. Terror Incognita

_“…A hospital run by a surgeon gone mad_ ….”

That has Stiles’ head snapping up to look at the TV mounted on the wall, brown eyes flickering with interest and the controller tossed to the little table beside the bathtub. The footage being shown on-screen is shaky and sepia-toned, showing white-clad patients pulling and tearing at doctors and nurses alike.

_“October eleventh of 1931 is when the esteemed Hale Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane was revealed as a hospital of horror. A fire set by patients in an uprising against the staff killed all but five lucky survivors in revenge for the inhumane torture that Doctor Peter Ian Hale inflicted on his patients…”_

And that really has Stiles riveted, any information he can get on the Hales treated like gold. Anything truly interesting got destroyed in the big fire over ten years ago, along with most of the family aside from Cora and Derek. Cora’s currently living in South America and, well, Derek isn’t exactly the sharing and caring type. Seems like fires are a family curse.

Stiles sighs, turning up the volume as the shaky camera work is replaced by a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a cheap suit that’s too large on him. He looks like someone’s grandpa on his way to church.

_“Peter Hale is little known today_ ,” the old man’s saying,” _but he’s probably one of the most prolific mass murderers of this century. He’s succeeded now by his great-grandchildren, Derek and Cora Hale. The sight of his carnage still exists today, restored almost completely by the Lahey family—”_

“And that’s all I needed to know,” Stiles says, muting the TV and grabbing his phone. The number he dials is one he memorized when he was sixteen and thought that feeling in his chest meant he was in love. Now he’s old enough to know it was a possessive claim on the massive Hale fortune and all the family name entitled him to.

“What,” snaps a voice down the line.

“Birthday update, babe.”

“As much as I’d love to listen to you talk about yourself for the next four hours, I’m kind of busy here. This nice reporter is trying to shoot me.”

“Well, I certainly hope they succeed.” There’s a faint _click_ and Stiles huffs in annoyance, glaring down at the _Call Ended_ message on his phone screen. “Such a dick.” He wastes no time in calling Derek back, keeping at it for the next ten and a half minutes until the asshole actually answers him.

“It’s opening day of my new theme park and you want to talk to me about your birthday,” he asks, almost disbelieving. “Really, Stiles? It can’t wait until I’m home and we’re trying to pretend each other doesn’t exist?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Derek might have laughed at that in the early years, but now it makes him let out an impatient sigh. “Just have everything arranged and you don’t even have to attend.”

“And by the next day the tabloids will say we’re getting a divorce.”

“The only reason we haven’t is because I didn’t sign the prenup.” And hadn’t that been a day filled with hope and all that other bullshit? Two freshly graduated high-schoolers that still believed in love despite only dating for two months. Unlike Scott and Kira, their relationship deteriorated after their two week honeymoon in Switzerland. “Now, are you going to listen to my idea or not?”

“I don’t think I have a choice here.”

“Good to see you’ve learned a thing or two.” Stiles can already see the impressive eye-roll that Derek is doing right now, he doesn’t even have to close his eyes to picture it. “So, I was watching _Terrifying But True_ —”

“Of course you were.”

“—And they were covering the old Hale Sanitarium and I figured it’d be a great place to host my birthday.” There’s silence on the other end, Derek actually speechless unless one of his precious roller coasters turned him into a bloody smear over brand new steel rails. It’s a nice picture and an even nicer insurance package for the poor widower.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Not dead yet, but Stiles will manage. “That’s not happening.”

“But—”

“Hold on a second, Princess. Matt says something’s up.” Stiles growls low in his throat at the nickname, but he keeps the scathing remarks to himself. Matt Daehler is miserable to be around at the best of times and he’s so far up Derek’s ass in the most metaphorical sense that it’d only be funny if Derek actually let the poor kid bang him.

Stiles can make out pieces of the muffled conversation, all of it about the new roller coaster, and tunes it out when there’s not any blackmail material. What’s the point of marrying someone with an ungodly amount of money if you can’t make them wish they’d never met you in the coffee shop so many years ago?

“Derek,” he shouts when he realizes the muffled conversation has ended.

“Jesus, don’t you have a cauldron to stir while I’m at work? Crystals to polish or Ouijas to wax? We’re not having your fucking party at that place, Stiles. You can forget it.”

“I’ll email you the guest list when I get out of the bath and every person on it had better be at the party this year or I’ll make a scandal so big that even the meth addicts will want to steer clear of your shiny rides and beheaded Beanie Babies.” Stiles hangs up before Derek can respond, tossing his phone to the side table and leaning back comfortably as warm jets of water work out the tense muscles in his back.

+

Derek scowls as he comes into his office, picking up the nine page list of guests his darling husband had emailed and his secretary had printed out. Half the people on the list aren’t even people that Stiles enjoys being around and the other half are ones he can gloat over, which makes sense considering his personality.

Derek tosses the papers on top of the shredder and pulls open a Word document, typing out names of different heads of industry as well as a few shallow leaches similar to his husband. If he’s going to suffer through this charade of a birthday, then he’s going to get his money’s worth out of it. What better way to celebrate than by gaining new investors? He’s just finished typing the last name when his phone chirps, the new email from Stiles short and to the point. _‘Don’t forget that you’re not invited -xoxo’_

Why did they even think marriage was a good idea back then?

Derek blames overpriced tequila and the fact that Stiles’ ass looks good in a pair of skintight pants. At least that’s one aspect of their marriage that hasn’t changed, Stiles is a decent lay and he’s vain enough now to stay in shape; a runner’s body, all lean muscles and dark moles. Derek used to lavish attention on those beauty marks until Stiles knew how much he loved them. Now Derek takes him face down and imagines someone else.

“Mister Hale,” Matt says, popping his head around the door. “Deucalion and his people are here to discuss profits for this quarter.”

“Tell them I’m coming.” Matt nods and ducks out, quick and efficient. Derek might have taken him to bed at one point, but even he’s got standards and Matt Daehler doesn’t fit them with his smarmy smiles and eager-to-please persona. He’s good for fantasies when Stiles gives Derek the cold shoulder but not much else.

He logs out of his account and strides out of his office, readying himself to take on the head of accounting and his little group of thugs-turned-legal.

+

It’s only seconds after Derek logs out that his computer comes back to life, password typed in and Word document pulled up by invisible hands. The names on the guest list are highlighted and deleted, replaced by names of a different sort before the document is forwarded to Matt for invitations to be sent out.

Hales are known for a nasty sort of revenge and Peter is thirsting to get his hands on the five who didn’t die.

+

Erica likes to think of herself as honest and trustworthy, but that doesn’t mean she’s letting this snotty brat of a director boss her around. She’s cute and sweet and makes the best fucking coffee in the entire department, so what gives Blake the right to treat her like secondhand garbage?

She says this right to Blake’s face instead of keeping it bottled up, you know, like a moron. Now she’s sitting curbside with the ugly black box that came in the mail. She’d been handing it over when Blake went off on a tirade and she’d forgotten about it until she sat down and her situation hit her like a bus. _Fired, jobless, no money for epilepsy meds_.

In short, she’s fucked.

She hefts the heavy metal box in her hands, turning it until she finds the simple lever on its right side with a little plaque bolted above it. “Rotate once to operate,” she reads aloud, barely more than a mumble. She turns the lever, a music box tune of the birthday song playing as a panel pops out on the front. There’s a little dial on the front of this part and another plaque reading _do not rotate under any circumstances_.

Unease hangs heavy in Erica’s gut as she stares are the warning, fingers twitching and curiosity urging her on. Who receives mysterious packages from FedEx anymore? Even Blake prefers to do her shopping through Erica and she’s FaceTiming her the entire time. The woman doesn’t even order things off Amazon when she’s drunk.

Curiosity may kill cats, but Erica has enough satisfaction to bring her back. She grabs up a stick and uses it to rotate the dial, happy she does when a tiny metal scythe bites into the wood enough to get stuck. The scythe is connected to a little skeleton that popped out of the top panel, made of shiny chrome that winks at her in the low sunlight. Erica leans closer, finding a small envelope wedged in beside the skeleton, small enough to fit comfortably in her palm.

“What the hell?” She pulls it out, setting the box aside as she traces her finger over the spidery writing on the front. It spells out Blake’s name, but Erica doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about breaking the wax seal on the back and pulling out the card. It’s made of the fancy card stock you have to pre-order, the words printed in black ink across the front with a slim border going around the edges.

_‘Derek T. Hale commands you to attend a very unique birthday celebration for Mister Stiles Stilinski-Hale’_ And if it didn’t have all of her attention before, it certainly does now. She flips the top up to see the details on the inside, brown eyes going wide at what she finds. _‘Terror, humiliation, perhaps even murder will be the entertainment with ONE MILLION DOLLARS paid to those that survive the entire night inside the walls of the **Hale Institute** ’_

There’s more information printed on the back, an email address to RSVP and a dress code of black tie that Erica can’t follow since all of her clothes come straight from the Goodwill. Still, one million dollars will keep her in the black for a while, certainly long enough to find a job where her boss isn’t a raging douche.

“Hale Institute, here I come.”

+

Despite popular belief, Boyd fucking hates dealing with people. Yes, he was a professional lacrosse player and, yeah, he’s decent at dealing with the press, but that doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to retail. The only thing that’s keeping him from stabbing Call-Me-Aiden in the face with a knitting needle is because he promised his mom that he’d make today a good day.

_Maybe she’ll understand if I tell her this guy is a creep_.

But no, bail money is something they can’t afford right now. Instead of acting on bad impulses, Boyd takes a deep breath and makes sure Aiden can’t see his fists balled up under the counter. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says, doing his best to keep his voice level. “Your brother needs the receipt if he wants to return this crochet hook.”

“But you can see that it’s bent.” _I’m gonna bend you in a minute_. Another deep breath, an easy smile that his sister used to love. “He needs a new one.”

“They’re in aisle three.”

“Your store sales cheap materials that bend easy—”

“Would you like to file a complaint?” Aiden sucks in a deep breath of his own and looks to his twin standing just a few feet away, the other staring down at his shoes like they hold all of life’s mysteries. He’s embarrassed by his brother’s actions and Boyd can’t blame him.

“We don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Ethan says finally, taking a step closer. “I’m sorry my brother’s making a scene.” Ethan turns back to his brother, speaking in a softer voice that Boyd can barely hear. “It’s not this guy’s fault that our foster mom is the Queen Bitch of Castle Hell.”

“Fine,” Aiden grumbles, looking ready to pitch a fit all the same. “Go pick out another one of these things and Kali doesn’t have to know that her sugar daddy is paying for it.”

“Ennis won’t mind. He actually likes us.” Boyd stops eavesdropping after that, biting back a snort at the unexpected turn in conversation. Sugar Daddies and foster parents aren’t something he has much experience with, but the Steiner twins seem tough enough to survive just about anything as long as they have each other. Boyd just really wishes they’d do some of that surviving outside of the crafts store.

“Pack your bags, we’re getting rich and really drunk,” comes a loud voice somewhere near the front of the store. It doesn’t take long for Boyd to make out the wide grin and bright blonde hair of his girlfriend as she comes barreling down aisle five straight for customer service where Boyd is currently trapped.

“What are you talking about,” he asks, catching her as she launches herself at him. Erica isn’t subtle at the best of times, but she’s really hyped about something right now and a hyped-up Erica can mean anything from a raise to twenty-five bucks she found on the subway.

“I got fired from work today because Blake is the biggest tool to ever tool in all of forever, but I forgot to give her this really weird box—here ya go, hold this—that FedEx delivered and I opened it and look!” It all comes out in a rush, but Boyd learned Erica Babble in first grade, so it’s not too hard to interpret as he hefts the metal box she’s shoved into his hands.

“You got fired and you stole Blake’s thingy?”

“Is it really stealing if the woman you take it from doesn’t know it was hers in the first place?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Boo-freaking-hoo. Check out what was inside that death trap.” She brings a small card out of her jacket pocket, waving it in Boyd’s face until he snatches it out of her hand and reads what it says out loud. Next to them, blatantly snooping, Aiden lets out a low whistle when Boyd rereads the part about winning _a million fucking dollars_.

“Jesus fuck, you guys looking to adopt? I know a great couple of kids that enjoy giving their foster parents solitude and making awesome pancakes on Saturday mornings. They’re twins, so that just makes them cuter.”

“Aiden, you just stole your foster mom’s sugar daddy’s credit card and set your brother loose in the yarn section,” Boyd points out.

“Yeah, but Kali sucks.” And, really, how can he argue with that when he’s met the five-foot-six inches of pure malice and thinly veiled hate? The first time he met her, she threatened to shove a tapestry needle into his brain for suggesting that Ethan try out crochet for some of his anger problems. He looks from Aiden to Erica, both of them pouting with a similarity that almost makes Boyd nervous.

“No, we’re too young to adopt a pair of teenagers. Hell, _we_ were teenagers just a few years ago.”

“But what about the party,” Erica asks, snatching the invitation back. “We totally have to go and win a lot of money. Think of what that million dollars will mean for us, babe.” She moves closer so she can rest her hands on his shoulders, leaning into his space with full confidence. She’s the only one Boyd’s let get this close to him since his baby sister was taken, and that’s not going to change any time soon. “We could get our own little apartment where our parents can’t come over without calling first.”

“Three bedrooms, so we can have a nursery.”

“Exactly. A beautiful nursery for the baby we’re going to have in three-to-four years, you’ll paint the walls a cheery yellow while I carve up the crib. Just like we’ve been wanting since college.” How can Boyd argue about that? How can he crush the hope in her beautiful brown eyes when there’s a shine to them that means possible tears? “That money will get us the IVF, if nothing else.”

“Fine, but I’m not wearing a tie.”

“Good, because I’m not wearing any underwear since the only decent dress in my closet is too tight for that shit.”

“Not exactly a new phenomenon.”

“A hot one, though,” Aiden says. Boyd turns an unimpressed stare at the teenager that he used to use as a bouncer to the Half Moon Club in Beacon Hills. It has the same effect as it did back then, the color draining from Aiden’s face as he spins on his heel and goes to hunt down his brother.

+

Katherine Alexandra Argent is a sociopath, she knows this and embraces it. She recognizes her flaws but doesn’t actually care enough to fix them since her relationships aren’t long-lasting enough to make an impact on the neat little checklist in her mind of all the things she needs to change.

Her point is that the world has been trying to eat her alive since she was eight years old and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to fight back the only way she knows how. Kate isn’t the type to back down, not even if it means her brother has to bail her out of jail for threatening to break her ex-agent’s nose. Again.

“Have I told you lately that your behavior is ridiculous,” Chris asks as they walk out of the police station, hands stuffed in the pockets of his heavy coat.

“Yesterday, we were eating dinner and I told Allison that she shouldn’t form friendships in school.” Kate shrugs, her logic sound. “They only exist because she’s stuck with those people for eight hours a day, not counting future archery practice. You know what they call that type of friendship in prison? Gangs.”

“That’s not— You can’t just….” He lets out a sharp sigh, shaking his head. “She is three years old, Kate. Let her be a fucking kid and stop putting your ideas in her head.” She bites back the scathing remark on the very tip of her tongue, knowing that Chris is the only family she has left aside from her niece. If Chris goes, then little Allison goes, too.

“Fine,” she grumbles, climbing into her brother’s SUV and eyeing the car seat in the back. It’s empty—of course it is, it’s two in the goddamn morning—but the checking is instinctual so she knows what words can and cannot be used during the drive. There’s no cursing around little ears because getting a call from the daycare after the little girl with neat pigtails tells another girl to _go fuck herself_ is a bad thing.

“This came for you yesterday.” He hands over a metal…. Something; it weighs half a ton and is all sharp corners like a house in a scary movie.

“What the hell is it?” There’s a smudge of red near one of the corners, dried blood that flakes when she scratches her fingernail over it hard enough. Despite that one imperfection, the thing is actually pretty neat. It’d go well on her mantel at home.

“An elaborate invitation.” Chris tosses a square of cardstock over to her as he pulls out of the parking lot, driving just under the speed limit until they’re well away from the police station. Kate reads over the invitation on the drive back to her brother’s house, tapping her finger against the side as she thinks it over.

She knows the Hales—well, _knew_ them. Before the fire, she and Erik had been passing acquaintances until she’d shown an interest in the guy’s nephew and Erik had threatened to tear her limb from limb and bury her under their septic tank. Derek, apparently, was out of bounds. A year after that, most of the family were burned alive in that big house of theirs and the survivors moved to New York to get away from it all.

“Have you read this,” she asks after a while, tracing the tip of her finger over the slight indentations in the card.

“I have.”

“Do you think I should go?” She almost wants to if only to see the place that gave Erik nightmares. He’d gone in the old family institute once on a dare and he’d come out ghost white and shaking. Kate had asked him what was wrong, tried to barge in there and see for herself, but Erik had dragged her back to the car and didn’t talk to her for a week.

“No, I don’t.” She does look away now, leveling her brother with an amused sort of look. “I already packed you an overnight bag and Allison snuck in a drawing of Señor Snuggles.” Ah yes, the grouchy old cat that Alli just had to have, bright orange and carrying a special hatred for Kate. Her and animals have never gotten along, but she tolerates them for her niece.

“Is that a statement on my lack of impulse control or just you knowing me so well that you’re not even gonna argue with me?”

“A little bit of both.” He turns into the driveway and parks before shutting off the car, staring ahead of him for a long moment before turning his gaze to her. “I want a promise before you leave, Kate.” This is his Serious Business stare, the one that always reminds her just who the younger sibling is in this family. “You come back home afterwards. I don’t care if you need me to come pick you up in the middle of the night, just come back to us.”

“I always do, Chris.”

“This is different and you know it. This is a Hale family tragedy waiting to happen and you’ll be smack dab in the middle of it.” She knows what he’s thinking, the words that are hanging like a ghost between them. _You almost died in that fire, Katie. We almost lost you along with Beacon Hills’ oldest family_.

“I promise I’ll come home, Bubba.” Neither of them mentions the little used childhood pet name, they just hug and soak up warmth. They don’t do this often enough, just be soft around each other, not since their mom died and their dad became an abusive old fuck. Maybe Kate needs this closeness, the touch with no strings to tangle her up in because her brother just wants to make sure she’s safe.

And maybe, just maybe, part of her knows that she might not get another hug after this.


	2. Funky Old House

Erica is riding in a limousine. It’s a sentence she’s never thought she’d string together in that order before. She’s riding in a limousine, wearing her favorite dress, and she’s got her boyfriend sitting next to her digging through the tiny packets of cashews that he found in a compartment between the seats.

They were picked up around six-thirty that evening and now everything is a dark blue as the sun dips behind the hills. This is the time that Erica loves the most, when the world begins to settle down and go all soft around the edges. It makes the artist in her wake up and her fingers itch to draw the gauzy clouds and the black silhouettes of trees.

“Do you think this place is gonna be haunted,” she asks, almost mashing her nose against the window. The city falls away as they turn onto an old road that leads further into the hills.

“That’s what everyone says,” Boyd says, shrugging. “Want some cashews?” He offers the package out, but Erica’s too busy watching the scenery blur past them. She’s never been this far out of town before and her stomach is doing nervous flips, but Boyd’s pinky brushing against hers is soothing.

“I read that the patients set a fire back in, like, the thirties or whatever and almost everyone died in it. The head dude was some psychopath that did experiments on them like that guy from that one episode of Supernatural.”

“Asylum, it was from season one and the bad guy was James Ellicott.” Of course he knows that, they’ve only watched the first two seasons religiously a thousand times now. Anything after that makes Erica too sad. “They might have gotten the idea for that episode from what happened at the Hale Institute.”

“Maybe….” She leans back in her seat, chewing on her bottom lip as her thoughts begin to wander.

It takes about an hour to actually make it to the institute, the road a curving black thing like a snake until it dead ends at a metal gate. The limo comes to a stop, slow and without the squealing brakes that Erica’s little car has, the headlights illuminating a skinny man near the gates. He’s tall from what Erica can tell, waving his arms and yelling something that she can’t make out.

 _Abandon all hope, ye who enter here_.

“We can go back home,” Boyd says, like she’s an open book and her thoughts have been underlined and bolded.

“I’ll go home when I have that million dollars in my wallet.” She’s the first one out, two other limos parking behind theirs as Boyd follows her up to the spaz that’s standing next to a beat up old truck. “Are you Derek?”

“No, I just own this place,” the man says, glancing around anxiously even after the others have joined them. The road doesn’t connect well to the driveway, smooth asphalt transforming roughly into gravel that crunches under the thick heels of her boots. “My name’s Isaac Lahey.” He holds out a hand, wincing whenever someone actually shakes it. Erica files that away for later, wanting to make sure she doesn’t touch the guy unless he instigates it.

“Is it really haunted,” asks another woman. She’s average height, but she’s gorgeous in an old Hollywood sort of way; dark blonde hair and a curvy figure that borders on Marilyn Monroe standards. If Erica wasn’t in a relationship and the woman next to her didn’t set off warning bells, then she’d climb her like a tree.

“No idea.”

“Any idea why Hale invited us all here? I haven’t seen him since he was sixteen.” Lahey looks exasperated by all the questions, too pale and too skinny for Erica’s liking. That could also be the mother hen in her sparking to life. She tends to adopt strays the way most people collect shot glasses.

“Does it look like I regularly hang out with a guy that gives away a million bucks like it’s nothing? All I know is that he wants me to get you guys inside for the night. Can we move now? Is that a thing you’re all capable of?”

“Can’t exactly make it up that driveway without falling on my face if there’s no light, bud,” Erica points out. Lahey nods his head quickly, reaching through the opened window of his truck and pulling out a heavy duty flashlight. He’s basically frazzled nerves shaped like a human and Erica has to fight the urge to hug him.

“Come on,” he’s grumbling under his breath, slapping the flashlight like it owes him money. Behind him, far up on a cliff that overlooks a private beach, lights flicker on brightly from the institution, a couple of spotlights moving in slow circles near the top that illuminates the entire driveway.

“Neat trick,” says the white guy standing near Boyd. He’s arrogant, the type of guy that joins a frat house and lives off his inheritance maybe. Erica’s not quite sure, but she knows that he’s not the kind of person she’d willingly associate with. She doesn’t like assholes.

“I know, friggin’ magical.” He tosses his flashlight back into his truck and moves to push the gate open, the hinges protesting with a loud shriek of rusted metal-against-metal. Boyd takes pity on him and opens the other section of the gate himself, his bulk helping him better than Lahey’s lack thereof.

“That million dollars better not be a joke,” the woman mutters, watching the men work to get the gate opened fully. “I’m Kate, by the way.” She holds out a hand and Erica shakes it, no sweat and a firm grip. Erica can appreciate that if nothing else.

“I’m Erica and that’s Boyd.” She doesn’t appreciate the once-over that Kate gives Boyd. She’s gone for the eyes for less than that before.

“Single?”

“Engaged to be married.” That’s a total fucking lie considering that neither of them actually believes in the sanctimonious crap show called marriage, but it makes Kate back off. “Hey, didn’t you used to have a TV show? Something about hunting, right?”

“Yep.”

“I bet you were pissed when it got canceled.” Maybe it’s a low blow and petty, but that’s basically ninety-percent of Erica’s personality by now and she’s learned to roll with it. Kate’s mouth tightens and the ugly frown makes her look more her age, closer to forty than thirty. “You coming, sweetheart?”

Erica saunters away, looping her arm through Boyd’s as they all start up the long, winding driveway. It’s surrounded by scrub brush and weeds on either side and Erica can hear the distant sound of waves crashing against the sand, maybe a mile or so away from them. The institution itself is ridiculous, differing layers and squared edges that should clash in the worst possible way; the tallest part has to be at least two hundred feet and even the shortest part is at least seventy.

It takes Boyd and the Dude Bro to get the front door shouldered open, revealing a lobby that might have looked beautiful once upon a time ago. It’s rectangular with black and white marble carefully arranged into diamond shapes inside a border of slightly upraised floor that separates the lobby from other parts of the first floor; at the far end is a massive staircase that leads up to the second level, and there’s a stained glass mural installed in a rectangular skylight over a table made of dark wood.

Erica moves closer to get a look at the mural, Kate following behind her with her phone raised up to take a video. It’s beyond creepy, something more suited to a Vincent Price movie rather than real life with its mashed-up faces and bright, primary colors.

“Jesus, someone call the Ghostbusters or something,” Erica remarks, looking around with wide eyes. It’s opulent considering how long it’s been closed up, a few work lamps set up on the left side beyond the square pillars that signals renovations being done.

“Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within,” Boyd says, the quote familiar. It’s one of his favorite books, Erica memorized it with him in third grade. “It had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut….”

+

“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” Derek looks unimpressed at Stiles’ ability to quote the entire last chapter of _The Haunting of Hill House_ , possibly because that’s the only thing Stiles has said the entire trip here. All two hours. Stiles likes seeing the little vein in Derek’s temple throb.

“We walk from here.” Stiles nods, busy counting the surprising lack of limousines and fancy cars. There are three limos to be exact, and no bright red Ferrari that Lydia insists on driving everywhere. “Come on, Stiles. I’m not carrying your shit for you this time.” Stiles scowls at his husband but grabs his bags all the same, following Derek up the long driveway towards the institute.

Stiles has done his research on this place, can recite important dates from memory, so he knows that there’s all kinds of juicy secrets locked away inside the Hale Institute. Maybe even records that survived the fire and were left to rot in some office hidden in the belly of the place.

The walk doesn’t bother him much, gives him time to plan revenge if this night doesn’t happen exactly the way Stiles has planned for the past two days. To say he’s obsessed doesn’t quite do it justice. He’s got too much riding on this to fail now, and his little sidekick had better not screw the pooch. His thoughts come to a screeching halt the second he has the front door open.

Stiles looks around him at the strangers gathered in the lobby of the old mental hospital, thoughts going ninety miles a minute as he tries to figure out what happened to the nine page list of people he’d emailed to Derek two days ago. Shredded probably, but the confusion on Derek’s face means that he didn’t invite these people either. So much for this being a halfway decent birthday.

He drops his bags to the floor, watching with slight satisfaction as the group all jump and turn almost in sync. They’re dressed nice, he supposes, but not black-tie like Stiles had specifically requested in his email. Then again, he’d also requested that Derek not attend so the disappointment isn’t exactly a new thing.

“Who the fuck are all of you?” No one gets the chance to answer, a thick slab of glass crashing down from the skylight in a shower of colors. Stiles locks up, _knows_ he should move, but part of him is wondering if Derek has lost his touch in the last few years. Killing Stiles with glass? At least come up with something creative.

Then someone is tackling him forward, Stiles ending up bent over the table with a body shielding him and a jagged piece of glass slamming into the table just half an inch from Stiles’ cheek. He takes a minute to breathe, letting himself relax before elbowing the person that kept him from dying.

“Get off me,” he growls, struggling back to his feet and spinning to glare at Derek. And really, is he getting sentimental in his old age? What’s the point in attempting a murder-disguised-as-accident and then saving his intended victim? Just sloppy and unprofessional is what it is.

“Congratulations, Stiles,” Derek says, rubbing his thumb over the cut on Stiles’ cheek. “You’ve been marked as the first to die tonight.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He brushes off his jacket, frowning as slivers of glass fall to the marble floor with small flashes of light. Overhead, the middle portion of the stained glass mural is gone and the skylight looks almost barren without it.

“Ask Lahey, it’s his family’s old superstition.” Stiles eyes the caretaker suspiciously, the curly-haired blond fiddling with his scarf instead of gawking like everyone else. “Isn’t that right, Lahey?” The other man’s lips twist into a scowl as he meets Derek’s gaze, long fingers still tugging on the handknitted monstrosity around his neck. The green and purple clash almost violently with each other and the rows aren’t even, probably done by a child.

“You’d have to ask someone else about that,” he shrugs. “My father is the only family member of mine that died here and that was ruled accidental. Out of everyone here, you’re the only one with a relative that was murdered on the premises, Mister Hale.” Stiles has to bite back a smirk as he glances over at Derek, taking satisfaction in the way that he rolls his eyes. “I hear devastating fire is more of a family curse than a wall collapsing.”

Derek clenches his jaw so tightly that Stiles is almost surprised when it doesn’t shatter, silence falling over their uninvited guests like a blanket. Even Stiles doesn’t bring up the fire, too much of a sore spot for both men since it happened just days before Claudia passed. Lahey doesn’t back down, though, steel forming around his backbone if only for a moment before blue eyes flick away.

“And on that note,” Derek says, voice as hard as his gaze. “I suppose the party should begin.”

“Call me crazy, but didn’t the party start when I nearly got beheaded,” Stiles asks dryly. Derek’s gaze flicks up to the ceiling and there’s something there, something that makes green eyes go soft for just a millisecond that has Stiles wondering if Derek had a part in that accident at all. Then he shakes that thought away because of course it was planned, Derek is too meticulous to not have factored shattering glass into his games.

“Come now, _dearest_ , beheading is too impersonal for me.” When he looks to Stiles again it’s with the familiar dislike that’s been growing like a weed for years now. It’s familiar ground, Stiles can handle it. “You know I like a more hands-on approach to murder.”

“Before we get to that, let’s have a word in private.”

Stiles marches up the stairs with Derek hot on his heels, not stopping until he finds the room with a sign hanging off the doorknob, _Hale_ written in an untidy, cramped script. He tears the sign off the door and storms inside, throwing it down on the four-poster set against the far right wall. It really is a nice room considering its location in the middle of bum-fuck California, but Stiles isn’t in the mood to _ooh_ and _awe_ over furniture.

“If you really wanted to ruin my birthday, you could’ve just invited Theo to the party,” Stiles sneers, not even waiting for the door to be closed before letting loose.

“I did invite Theo. I figured you’d be comfortable hanging around with another little gold-digger. Hell, I invited an entire list of people that matched your personality and my ambitions, but none of them have shown up. I don’t know where you drug up those social rejects gathered downstairs or how you hacked into my computer, but congratulations, Stiles. This is a new low.”

“A new low? Danny made sure I couldn’t hack your computer even if I wanted to, Derek! This is all your doing!”

“It really wasn’t you?” The look Stiles sends him suggests he was dropped on his head one too many times as a baby. “Then who the hell did it? Ghosts?” Stiles straightens and a muscle in his jaw twitches as realization hits home.

“Matt did it.”

“Matt?”

“Yeah, your stupid ass secretary that can barely tie his shoes without falling flat on his face. He’s pissy that we never invite him to shit, so this is him getting payback. If I were you, I’d consider it his letter of resignation.”

“He’s too scared of me to try this.”

“Is that what keeps your ego nice and big? I hate to burst your bubble, Der, but Matt’s as scared of you as he would be a bunny. You have angry eyebrows, sure, but the rest of you is all Disney fucking Princess. You’re about as threatening as Luke Skywalker before R2 showed up.” At Derek’s blank expression, Stiles rolls his eyes and flops face-first onto the bed. “You still haven’t watched the movies, have you?”

“Would it make you happy if I did?”

“Exceedingly.”

“Then I won’t.” And, really, Stiles should have seen that coming. He rolls onto his back, watching as Derek comes closer, one leg between the two that Stiles has dangling off the bed. The position, the power play, used to get Stiles all hot and bothered, but now he’s just tired.

“You want to know something that would make me just ecstatic? Find a way to drop dead in three seconds so I can skip off into the sunset with your family fortune.” Derek smirks, running his fingers up the in-seam of Stiles’ pants, tantalizingly close to his dick.

“I thought finding ways to kill me was your specialty, Princess. I’d hate to take all the fun out of it.” His fingers press gently into Stiles’ abdomen, undoing a couple buttons and untucking the shirt so he can feel warm skin. Part of Stiles wants to buck up into the touch, see what happens.

Stiles sits up and runs his nose along his husband’s happy trail, the dark hair hidden by a pressed shirt and gray waistcoat. “Remember last Halloween,” he murmurs, hands going to the backs of Derek’s thighs. “The Kool-Aid you couldn’t stomach?”

“You mean the Jim Jones Kool-Aid that was a bit too literal for my doctor’s liking? Yeah, that one is hard to forget.” Derek lets out a sharp hiss when Stiles begins to mouth at his cock, hardening inside perfectly tailored trousers. “I think my favorite little attempt was that Halloween store knife with the not-so-retractable blade.”

“Mmm, that one even had you crying.” Derek twines his fingers in Stiles’ hair, yanking harshly until his husband is looking up at him. “What’s wrong, Der? Worried that Matt’s gonna see what you look like when you come?” Stiles pulls loose and stands up, unbuttoning the rest of his shirt.

“What makes you think that Matt is watching us?”

“Because one of his little hidden cameras is in plain view in the crown molding over the bedroom door.” He gestures at the little black spec that’s just a little too out of place, a little too out in the open for Stiles’ keen eyes to miss. “I’m going to take a shower. Tell your trained rat that I’ll skin him alive if I find a camera in the bathroom.”

“And what about your guests downstairs? Shouldn’t you be entertaining them?” Stiles pauses with one hand griping the doorframe, looking at Derek over his shoulder. The man really is gorgeous, sharp angles and hard muscle and green eyes. Stiles should love him or at least feel something that isn’t a deep hatred burning low in his belly.

“You shredded my guests, Derek. This is your sick little scene now.”


	3. Lockdown

Lahey is almost spastic when Derek makes it back to the lobby, twitchy fingers pulling on his jacket cuffs. “Mister Hale,” he calls, chasing Derek past the columns and over to the bar. Derek had sent Matt over early to stock the place and set up a few scares. Surprisingly enough, everything looks competently done so far. “Mister Hale, I got your guests up here and I’d like my money now.”

“Calm down, I’m getting it.” He pulls out his wallet and a handful of checks to match the number of guests that have bothered to show up, waving them in the air tauntingly. “I have enough bank drafts in my wallet to pay every single one of you a million apiece. All you have to do is make it through the night without getting slaughtered by a ghost.” He turns hard green eyes on Lahey and waves the checks once more. “You could get a million as well.”

“No thanks, I’m not that greedy.”

“Very well then.” He stuffs the drafts into an envelope and slides it in his pocket, tapping it twice with his fingers. “Fair warning, you die and the remaining money gets split between those still alive.”

“How very generous. I’d like my money now.”

“You’d willingly turn your back on a million bucks that you can cash at any bank?” Lahey just arches his brows and wiggles impatient fingers. “Fine, just let me sign the damn thing.” He seats himself on a barstool and then spins to face the others. “While we’re on the subject, what are the rest of your names?”

“Kate Argent,” says the busty blonde, stepping forward. Derek has a vague memory of her hanging out with his uncle Erik and a slightly less vague one of her failed seduction techniques. Derek’s fully committed to men, so Kate never really stood a chance.

“I’m Erica and this is Boyd,” says the other blonde, her grin positively feral as she rests a hand on the shoulder of a very bulky black man. Now _that_ is someone that has a chance of seducing Derek, muscular without it being too much, stoic, and a pair of brown eyes that you can get lost in.

“I’m Jackson Whittemore, MD” says the only other man present. He’s average height with good cheekbones, blond hair fading slowly to brown and a body built like a lacrosse player. Derek knows he’s seen him somewhere before, some fundraiser or another that he and Stiles were required to attend so they don’t seem like snobs. Don’t get him wrong, they are snobs, but their press crew like the Hales to seem like approachable snobs.

“Well, I can safely say that I’ve never heard of a single one of you.” The lie rolls off his tongue easily and part of him is satisfied when Kate deflates like a popped balloon. If she thinks she has a snowball’s chance in hell of sinking her claws into his family fortune then she’s shit out of luck. Stiles already has his claws sunk into it and it’ll take a friggin’ werewolf to make him fuck off back into the woodwork.

“Then why the hell did you invite us?”

“I didn’t.” Jackson scoffs and shakes his head, a tic in his jaw. “In fact, my little guest list and the one my husband made were both thrown in the nearest trash bin. I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be some amusing joke, but who can say. In the meantime, we’re stuck with each other and you all may as well make some money off of it.”

“Hell, I’ll be your best friend if it gets me a million bucks,” Erica states, teeth looking too white in contrast to the bright red lipstick she has on. It’s a good color on her, something not a lot of people can say.

“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever need someone to say how generous and kind I am on camera.” Which, actually, could come in handy at some point.

“Okay, I’m sorry for interrupting, but I want my money,” Lahey says with more force than Derek’s seen him use so far. He’s angry and anxious, almost vibrating out of his skin. “Give me the goddamn money right now, ‘cause I want it.” He’s wiggling his fingers again and Derek wonders what he’d do if Derek were to nibble those fingertips.

“Keep your shorts on.” Derek signs the check with a flourish and holds it up, Lahey snatching it like he’s afraid Derek had been lying about the five hundred dollar payday.

Lahey gets two feet away when the noises start up, groaning of metal against metal like a ride that’s not had enough maintenance done to it. “Oh Jesus, no.” And then Lahey’s off like the devil is nipping at his heels, full-on sprinting back towards the entrance while the others look around for the source of the noise. Derek has studied at the blueprints of the old place, there shouldn’t be any gears at all in the building and definitely not ones that can make this sort of racket.

“What the hell is that,” Boyd asks, drawing everyone’s attention to the windows. Metal sheets are sliding slowly downward from the very top of the institute, different layers for different floors, all of them slotting into place with a loud _clank_. The ruckus only stops when all the windows and doors are shuttered, no cracks between the metal and the windows for moonlight to enter.

“Boyd,” Jackson calls. “Help me with this.” The two men move over to a window, one of the few that hasn’t been repaired and had been letting in a nice breeze until the metal came down. “We’ll try to lift on three.” Boyd nods and counts down, the both of them heaving with all their might against the small shelf built into the sheet, but it doesn’t so much as budge.

“This isn’t moving anytime soon.” Boyd lets out a grunt as he steps away, rubbing at his shoulder. “We’re gonna have to find out what triggered this.” Jackson turns to look at Derek, striding over so that he’s barely a foot out of Derek’s personal bubble.

“Is this some sort of sick joke?” There’s the sound of shattering glass next, followed by a series of rather impressive curses.

“Lahey’s certainly not laughing,” Derek says, nodding to where the other man is punching and kicking at panes of glass in a fit of rage. Once he’s torn the glass out of its frame, Lahey starts pulling at the iron bars meant to keep inmates inside, smacking the pane of metal and leaving bloody handprints behind. “You’re the doctor, Jackson. How about you go and check on our new buddy?”

“If I find out that you pulled this stunt, then I’m gonna hire that guy the best lawyer in California to sue your ass for whatever trauma you just brought to the surface.” And then he’s off, the others following behind to check on the resident spaz until it’s just Derek and Kate left behind.

“I take it you’re not the motherly type that has to make sure all her ducklings are okay.”

“Not in the slightest,” she answers, wandering over to the bar and digging through the bottles. “I’m more the type to watch wayward ducklings wander into oncoming traffic.” She laughs, a dry sound that makes Derek uncomfortable. She used to laugh like that when he was a kid, too. Now he doesn’t have his uncle around to fend her off.

“Jesus, you’re still creepy.” He walks over to the others at the end of the hall, glad to put distance between him and the ex-TV star. Jackson has one of Lahey’s hands held up to see better, the knuckles busted and bloody, but salvageable. “What the fuck just happened?”

“It’s something meant for riots to keep patients from escaping,” Lahey says, voice cracking. “This is why people burned to death in ’31. Hale threw the switch because if he was gonna die, then so was everyone else. I’ll bet he was real pissed off when his wife and those other four made it out with just a few burns.”

“His wife worked here,” Erica asks, a crease forming between her brows as she looks around.

“Yeah, she was the unofficial head of electroshock therapy. Turns out Corinne was just as insane as her damn husband.”

“Why wasn’t that machine in the blueprints,” Derek asks. “Actually, more pressing, why the hell hasn’t it been disabled?”

“It was on my dad’s to-do list before the house decided to kill him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Houses don’t kill people.” Lahey turns on Derek with a ferocity in his glare that almost makes him flinch back, blue eyes bright with a fevered rage. “I read the police report, it said your father was killed when a wall he was working on collapsed.” The others send him unsure looks. “My husband’s friend is the Sheriff of Beacon Hills and a hacker on top of that. It’s not exactly difficult to get background information on weird old sanitariums and the families that own them.”

“Yeah, well, that report was a crock of shit. The house is alive, we’re all going to die.” Lahey stalks off back to the makeshift bar, falling into one of the armchairs with blood dripping from his hands to the floor.

“This is ridiculous. You’re obviously scared shitless and hurt on top of that. I’m calling for help and I’ll pay for your medical bills.” Derek pulls out his cell, but there are zero bars and a neatly displayed _No Service_ message at the top of the screen. “The metal plates are fucking with my signal.”

“It’s not the plates, it’s the _house_.” He hisses as Jackson douses his knuckles in vodka, trying to jerk his hand away and failing miserably. The doctor is stronger and he doesn’t let go until a cloth napkin is wrapped firmly around Lahey’s hand. “The cleaning crew will be here at 9:30 in the morning. They can let us out if we haven’t already been brutally murdered.”

“Why does this feel like someone’s trying to cheat us out of a shitload of money,” Boyd asks, a rhetorical thing that Derek doesn’t deign to reply to.

“Because it probably is,” Stiles says as he comes down the stairs. The suit is gone, replaced by Batman sleep pants and nothing else. His dark hair is still damp from his shower, sticking up at odd angles from rubbing it with his towel. “Congrats, Derek, you got me for once. Nearly made me fall right out of the shower.”

“Wasn’t me this time, Princess,” Derek replies, almost smiling when Stiles rolls his eyes at the pet name. “I didn’t even know the house had that lovely little feature until just a moment ago.”

“Then who did it? Last I checked, you’re the only person here with an engineering degree.” Stiles casts doubtful looks at the others, dressed in their best clothes that don’t come close to comparing to Stiles’ high standards. Jackson comes the closest to that, a nice tux that’s dark blue and almost shiny.

“My engineering degree has been used to cushion our bank account, but it’s never been used to fix up any part of this building. Just ask Lahey.” The man in question raises his head, using an extra napkin to wipe the blood off his hands.

“Didn’t even know who he was until a couple days ago,” he grumbles. “And this whole…. _Thing_ can only be switched on in the basement as far as I know. That’s where the control room for this whole place is. Creepy as hell down there. I only go when I don’t have a choice and never by myself.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing you have us,” Erica states, hands on her hips. The high-heeled boots have been ditched and the nails have been painted cherry red, chipping in places. “Lead the way.”

“Oh no, nope. No way in hell am I going down there in the middle of the night after all this weird shit has been happening.”

“You can get up willingly or I can drag you down there by your hair. I try not to threaten people, Lahey, I really do, but you’re tapdancing on my last nerve right now.”

“She’ll do it,” Boyd confirms, pride bleeding into his tone. Lahey seems to realize that the woman will, in fact, make him regret saying no a second time because he stands up and throws the napkin down on the little side table next to the armchair.

“Atta boy.” She looks like she wants to clap him on the shoulder but refrains, sensing his aversion to touch. “Let’s get going before anything else decides to malfunction. Erica sends a distrustful stare in Derek’s direction, which is entirely fair if he’s being honest.

“Before you go,” Stiles starts, long fingers plucking up a box of candles from the bar. “You should probably be aware that Derek has this house rigged with all sorts of delicious little surprises. It’s best to be armed. You never know when one of those tricks will turn deadly.”

He steals a Zippo out of Jackson’s suit pocket and lights one of the candles just to blow it out and watch the smoke curl up towards the ceiling. It draws Derek’s gaze upwards, towards the gap in the mosaic above the table where a sheet of glass had nearly decapitated Stiles. Derek certainly won’t cry on the day Stiles finally dies, but he’d like to be the one to pull the trigger.

“Don’t you think it’s time to break out the party favors, babe?” Green eyes flick back down, meeting brown across the room. Stiles is still holding the red candle, relit now with hot wax dripping down over his fingertips like drops of blood.

“Well, I suppose there’s nothing better to do at the moment,” he concedes. He gestures for the others to follow him to another section of the front lobby, revealing a wonderfully carved coffin set up on a low table that’s draped in red velvet.  “Jackson, give me a hand with this lid.” He steps up and they lift on three, the lid itself at least ten pounds and making a hollow _thud_ when they set it on the ground next to the table. Inside the coffin are six miniature versions, floating on water and the white fog from dry ice in the bottom.

“How spectacularly spooky.” Stiles says it deadpan, reaching out to flip up one of the lids and pulling out a pistol. It’s the real deal, the magazine loaded with blanks and welded in place. They won’t kill anyone, but they’ll hurt like a bitch. “A Nine Millimeter, really? The exact replica of the one my dad gave you the shovel talk with. And here I was thinking you weren’t sentimental.”

“What can I say? I’m full of surprises.”

“Is it loaded?” Stiles holds it with the same skill as a professional, the son of a cop and therefor well-trained in gun safety. Curiosity kills cats and Stiles is definitely curious.

“What kind of idiot would I be if I actually handed you a loaded gun? It’s just blanks, I loaded them myself.” He brings it up all the same, pulling the hammer back once it’s leveled with Derek’s face. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react beyond blinking once, and all the amusement seems to drain right out of Stiles.

“Maybe the wildcat should have the gun instead. After all, she’s the one going into the basement.” Stiles hands the gun off to Erica, who quickly passes it to Boyd. “I hear that’s where old Uncle Petey did all his really crazy shit.”

“Mostly electroshock therapy,” Lahey mutters. “The basement door was half-hidden by a charred old bookshelf when my grandpa started the reconstruction and he told me it’s basically storage.” He shrugs and avoids eye contact, anxiety rolling off him in waves so thick that Derek can almost smell it. “It’s a fucking maze down there, Erica.”

“Then it’s a good thing you can lead us through it,” Erica states confidently.

“I got lost in a parking garage last week just trying to find my car.”

“Then we’ll use something to keep us on track. Anyone have any breadcrumbs?”

“I’ve got some yarn in my bag,” Boyd says. He looks completely unfazed when most of the group turn surprised looks on him. “I work in a craft store and I bought it for this kid that comes in weekly. I figured giving it to him instead of his brother stealing it will keep them both out of juvie for a while.”

“Uh-huh, well, that’s a mystery solved,” Derek quips dryly. “I’ll meet you all downstairs in a bit.” Stiles grabs his arm, digging blunt nails in to keep Derek in place. He can break out of it easily if he wants to, but he allows himself to be held in place for the moment.

“And where do you think you’re going,” Stiles asks, arching a brow. He waxes them at least twice a month, keeping them from getting too bushy. Sometimes Derek will come home from work to find his living room completely taken over by his husband and sister-in-law for all intents and purposes, Lydia outlining Stiles’ eyes in plum liner while he works on not fidgeting. Derek learned a long time ago that he’s not welcome to those little parties after he made a comment and Lydia threatened to skin him alive and turn him into shoes.

“Just thought I’d take a leak,” he says, jerking his arm free. “You’re welcome to tag along if you’re afraid of the big bad house.” Stiles scoffs, totally disbelieving. “Can I go now or would you like to chat some more?”

“Nah, go ahead. Tell Matt I flushed his waterproof mic down the toilet.” Derek doesn’t reply as he heads back to the stairs, taking them two at a time until he’s in the little HQ that Matt set up a few hours ago. He’d texted Derek directions before he and Stiles left their house, the little room just off the main hall on the third floor.

Matt is sitting in front of a row of monitors, munching absently on baby carrots and tapping his foot along to the beat of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. His build is similar to Stiles’, similar features and brown hair; maybe there’s a reason he picked this guy out of fifty other interns.

“Nice work with that scare earlier,” Derek praises, clapping a hand down on Matt’s shoulder. “You even made me jump when it started.”

“Oh, that wasn’t me.”

“Then who the fuck was it?”

“Just the house as far as I could tell. I’ve been watching these monitors since two o’clock this afternoon, I’ve got cameras in nearly every nook and cranny, and I can tell you with ninety-nine percent certainty that no one in this place triggered those sheets falling down. My guess is that this place is finally falling apart.”

“No, that’s not right. That shit was _timed_. Stiles had something to do with it and I’m gonna figure out how he did it without ever leaving the bathroom.”


	4. Drive a Sane Man Mad

The basement has a musty smell to it, like old mothballs and a century’s worth of dust. It hits Boyd the second the door is opened, the doorway framing a black void of nothing until Erica turns on the little flashlight she carries with her everywhere. She’s the first one to start down the stairs with Boyd close on her heels, the cement worn smooth and nearly slippery under his boots.

“This isn’t a good idea,” Lahey mutters behind them, almost singing it. “This is a monumentally stupid idea.”

“You got a better one,” Boyd asks, more than ready to commit to any plan that doesn’t include basements in old sanitariums. “I’m all ears, Lahey.”

“Gimme a minute, I’m sure I can come up with something.” The smell gets worse when they reach the floor, bulky shadows faintly illuminated by the flashlight, spiderwebs transformed into strings of silver. “Here, I think the thingy for the lights is over here somewhere.”

Boyd sticks close behind Erica, squinting to make out anything other than brief reflections. He steps forward, trying to make out one of the shapes rising up out of the gloom, something that shines dully, reflects the yellow beam. The lights come on all at once with a squeal and crash, the shape suddenly in clear focus.

He scrambles backwards, nearly toppling over his girlfriend in the process of trying to get away from the monster. It’s a corpse incased in glass, sitting astride a half-mummified horse, ligament wrapped over fragile bone and yellowed with age. The whole room is filled with the things; a child with a misshapen head, a man with bulbous sores around his mouth, conjoined twins with the one on the right sagging towards the floor. It’s like butterflies pinned to cardboard.

“Relax, they’re just sculptures,” Lahey says, bored. “Hale had them throughout the building but, uh, my grandpa had them brought down here when the remodeling started.” He comes over, wiping dust off onto his pants leg as he glowers at the sculpture of a partially dissected woman. She’s displayed nude and cut into pieces, half of her chest cavity wide open to reveal dusty ribs with her internal organs displayed on the side. “That was his favorite. He kept it in his office upstairs.”

“Guy was sick in the head,” Erica grouses.

“That’s the understatement of the fucking century.”

“Lead the way, dude. You’re the one with the knowledge, I’m just here to fight off the mice.” Boyd scowls over at her, but she’s grinning and he’s reminded of why he wants to be with her forever. She fights the mice for him and he grabs stuff off high shelves for her. It’s a mutual thing.

“Fine, but I want the record to show that I’m under duress.”

“Noted.” Lahey actually manages a brief shadow of a smile, accepting the flashlight and starting forward.

The air in the basement is humid, the walls holding a light sheen of moisture that feels slimy whenever one of Boyd’s shoulders brush against them. He begins to understand why Lahey says the basement is a maze the further they go, other halls and rooms branching off each other like tree limbs, crisscrossing in places and dead-ending in others. The layout is like something from a Stephan King novel, intricately ridiculous and terrifying.

Overhead, the ceiling is cracked in places, crudely installed electric lights placed between thick slabs of stone that look about ready to crumble. Boyd is just about to point it out to Lahey when one of the slabs breaks free, the bulkier man grabbing the hood of Lahey’s coat and yanking him backwards seconds before the stone hits the floor where Lahey had been standing.

“Holy God,” he breathes, clinging to Boyd with his free hand. “T-thanks.”

“Don’t mention,” Boyd says, heart pounding out a rapid tempo against his ribs. _That could have killed him_. The slab itself has to be at least twenty pounds and it had gathered enough force to absolutely _shatter_ where it hit the ground. If Boyd hadn’t grabbed Lahey, then the man’s skull would have been smashed beyond recognition.

“Let’s, uh, let’s get this over with.” They continue down the main hallway, like Lahey’s afraid to leave it despite the trail of red yarn Boyd’s been uncurling behind them this entire time. It’s tied to the doorknob of the basement door and the ball won’t run out for a while yet.

“Why hasn’t the basement been renovated yet,” Erica asks after a good ten minutes. She’s been studying the place for weak spots ever since Lahey was nearly killed and Boyd’s surprised it’s taken her this long to ask.

“Haven’t had the time to hit it yet.” He shrugs, hands in his jacket pocket like to accidentally touch something would send him into a nervous breakdown. “Besides, my work crew is terrified of the basement. They refuse to come down here once it starts to get dark.”

“That’s insane.”

“No, insane is wandering around in a dark basement inside an institution that wants to kill us all.” His shoulders are hunched around his ears, blond hair glowing faintly under the flickering lights. Boyd’s sure that, even if the lights worked correctly, the basement would still be cast in a deep gloom thanks to a decade’s worth of dust and cobwebs covering the wire-incased bulbs. “I think the last time this basement was renovated was a few weeks before the fire.”

“Is that a fact,” Derek asks, rounding the corner directly ahead of them and scaring the bejeezus out of them. Boyd’s first instinct is to grab for Erica, pulling her back a split second before her fist could connect with Derek’s nose. Honestly, he wouldn’t mind seeing this guy brought down a peg or two, but Boyd would really like to avoid Erica getting sued. “A little jumpy, aren’t we?”

“I’d like to see you laugh when you have to pick your teeth up off the floor,” Erica growls at him. Boyd gives a proud smile, grip shifting until he has a hand on Erica’s lower back. She’s perfectly capable of reeling in her fight or flight response on her own, Boyd just likes to help her make the right decision depending on the situation. “Hey, what’s up with the secret room?”

“What secret room,” Lahey asks, then follows her gaze. There’s a section of wall that’s only partially bricked up a few feet ahead of them, the gaping hole about the right size for someone to crawl through if need be. The bricks making up the jagged edges of the hole are old and beginning to crumble away in places, red dust scattered over the floor with no footprints to disturb it. “I’ve never noticed that before.”

“It’s creepy as hell.” Boyd moves to stand directly in front of it, running the pad of his finger over one of the bricks and holding it up to the feeble light. It’s covered in the dust, rust-red and smelling faintly of damp, growing things.

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne the best I could,” he murmurs, wiping the dust off on his pants leg. “Where do you guys think this leads?”

“Nowhere good, I’m sure. Let’s keep moving before we hear someone calling out for Montresor.” They take off again with Derek and Lahey in the lead, Erica trailing behind at a more careful speed so she can make sure nothing else is about to fall on their heads. Boyd hangs back as well, a protective instinct flaring to life with an almost overwhelming speed. He hasn’t felt it this strong in ages, not since his little sister disappeared and his father looked at him like he was less than mud.

 _You were her big brother_ , a traitorous voice in his head hisses at him. _You should have been watching her, should have died to keep her safe_.

A small, warm hand slides into his and squeezes, the bright grin Erica sends him enough to dispel those old thoughts. What’s done is done and he can’t change the past. It’s best to just move forward and live his life the way Alicia would have wanted.

They wind up in an office of sorts, the white squares of tiles on the wall stained brown with water damage and probably something a little more disgusting. There’s a desk on the right side, one of the legs splintered and lying nearby like it had been thrown, the desk sitting at an odd angle. Beyond that is a door covered in a metal grate, rusted in places and protesting loudly when Derek swings it open to let them pass through.

The next room holds an exam bed with leather restraints, three of the walls covered in old equipment that looks like it would have been old even in the thirties, covered in layers of dust and spiderwebs. Boyd doesn’t like this room, it makes his stomach clench painfully as he realizes what this room used to be.

“Electroshock therapy,” Lahey confirms and Boyd raises a brow in his direction. “This was where Corrine Hale performed her experiments on the patients.”

“What happened to her,” Derek asks, drawing a heart in the dust that covers a metal box mounted on the right wall.

“She escaped before the lockdown, her and four others. All the real sadists with the exception of Peter. There’s a few of these rooms all hooked together down here because Corrine liked to zap patients in multiples of eighteen. She liked the way the lights would flicker.” There’s a moment of tense quiet as they look around, Derek’s hand falling back to his side after writing Stiles’ name below the crudely drawn heart. “Well, I vote we keep moving.”

“Seconded,” Erica says, quick to shuffle back out into the hallway.

Lahey and Erica lead the way together and they wind up standing in front of a heavy metal door, the black writing on the front too corroded for Boyd to make out. Beyond it, in a room far larger than any of the others in the basement that he’s seen so far, is a…. Well, he’s not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be. It looks like a metal chamber that sits in the direct middle of the room, thick tubing running from it to vents in the walls.

“What the hell is that,” Boyd asks, honestly dumbfounded.

“It’s the saturation chamber,” Lahey says, lingering in the doorway and anxious to be out. Boyd ignores that for the moment, wandering over to the door of the chamber. It’s like something out of an old sci-fi movie, dark iron with a wheel to turn in order to open it or lock it from the outside. The door looks like it belongs on a submarine rather than in the basement of a mental institution.

“What’s a saturation chamber,” Derek asks, running his hand along one of the thick black cables that twist into slots in the wall.

“It was supposed to treat schizophrenia. It would bombard the patient with scary images at a rapid pace meant to fix their brains. If you ask me, I think Hale could have used a few hours in that thing.” He shrugs and leans in the doorway, arms crossed tightly over his chest to hide the way his hands are shaking. “It was supposed to scare them into being mentally well.”

“I use medicine for that,” Boyd says, setting the ball of yarn on a grimy table to take a look around. He sees a flash of yellow hair in his peripheral, Erica heading back the way they’d come by herself. Boyd follows her, not wanting her to get lost when he’s pretty sure there are mice just waiting to leap out and eat him like he’s made of cheese.

His fear of mice is irrational, he knows this. Does that knowledge keep him from holding Erica’s hand when he hears the scurrying of little claws on cement? Fuck no. He holds her hand like he never plans on letting go.

“Did it work,” he asks, stopping ten feet away from the other two. He counted his steps, a little trick that helps him keep everything straight in his head. As long as he knows how many steps he’s taken, then he can always find his way home. When he doesn’t get an answer, he looks over his shoulder and finds the room empty. “Those assholes left us.”

“What?” Erica turns and strides back into the chamber as though she’s expecting Derek and Lahey to jump out and shout _boo_. “Oh, what the fuck? So much for sticking together.” Boyd picks up the ball of yarn, holding it in a sweaty palm. “Let’s head this way, maybe we can catch up with them.” She gestures at a doorway to the left with her flashlight, the beam turning cobwebs silver.

“You really think they went that way?”

“It’s the only way out of this room other than the way we came.” Boyd frowns, looking around one more time before heaving a sigh and following her through the doorway. The hinges are black when he gets close enough to notice them, bits of wood clinging to them from where the door must have been violently removed.

Beyond that is two stairs, the stone worn smooth from decades of being walked on, hundreds of shoes scuffing against it until it looks purposefully done. Erica is in the lead, as she should always be, and she takes the small set of stairs to a slightly higher floor, red-painted nails scrapping lightly against the wall as she goes down a new hallway.

The lights are off in this section of the basement, the bulbs blackened in their wire cages above locked doors. Boyd knows they’re locked because he’s already tried to open four of the damn things and they don’t budge in their frames, the wood fat and swollen with damp. The knobs are cold under his palm and there’s something black growing along the walls in thin rivulets.

“Jesus, this place is creepy,” Boyd says, voice pitched low. There’s something down here, he can feel it deep in his gut and by the way the hairs on his neck stand up. Something’s watching them. And, not once the entire time they’re down there, does he think the cold, searching gaze belong to some _one_.

“Where’d they go? The only footprints out here belong to us.” Boyd glances down to the floor, the thick layers of dust only disturbed where they’ve walked. Ahead of them is untouched, like snow or ash.

“Maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere.”

“But it’s just been one long hallway so far. Unless that room had a secret doorway, then Derek and Lahey didn’t come this way.” She stops in the middle of the hall, rubbing a hand over her forehead. With a sharp sigh, she turns on her heel and she looks ready to talk but her mouth gets…. Stuck? Erica Reyes never gets stuck like that, she’s the one that’s willing to say whatever pops into her head and damn the consequences.

“What?”

“The yarn…?” That’s about the time he feels it, the faintest of tugs like someone’s pulling on the string behind him. He gazes slowly at the ball in his hand and follows the previously limp string he’d been dragging along behind him. It’s pulled taut in the air and he can feel the ball beginning to unravel the harder the yarn is tugged.

“Derek,” he shouts,” this isn’t funny! Knock it the fuck off!” There’s another insistent pull and Boyd gives a vicious pull of his own, holding the dwindling ball with both hands. The yarn goes lax for an instant and Boyd thinks maybe Derek and Lahey will round the corner at any moment, but then he’s flying forward to the ground and something is dragging him back down the hall.

“Boyd!”

“Help! Eri, help!” He can distantly hear her chasing after him, but the noise dims as he flies down the set of stairs and around a corner faster than she can keep up. The concrete is rough against his belly, leaving it raw and red where his shirt has been rucked up. He’s swung around another corner and the ball of yarn goes bouncing out of his grasp, unraveling in a mess of tangles with blood seeping into it from where it had cut into Boyd’s hand.

“Erica,” he calls, standing slowly. He pulls his shirt back into place, not wanting to think about what kind of bacteria might be comingling with the cuts on his chest and belly right now. “Eri, where are you?” There’s a flash of movement to his left, faint blue lights that turn a grisly red before vanishing altogether in the oppressive darkness. “Derek, is that you? Look, man, this isn’t funny!”

 _“No moves left_ ,” a voice hisses, a garbled thing that’s half-growled. It reminds him of the monsters hiding under beds, the boogeymen in the closet, of dark things that want to create ruin. _Chaos, strife, and pain_.

“Who’s there?” His voice echoes, terrifyingly loud as it ricochets off the walls like a bullet. “Hale? Lahey? Get out here!” There’s darkness beyond the gate in front of him and the hinges are squealing like someone’s trying to open it, but there’s nothing. It’s black as pitch and the squealing of metal against metal drowns out all sound until suddenly Erica is grabbing him by his arms and spinning him to face her.

“Are you okay,” she demands, looking him over and wincing when she sees the state of his hands. “What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t know.” His voice is a pitiful rasp, a little boy scared that something will get him if he’s too loud. “I don’t know, but I want out of here. Get me out of here, Eri.” She wraps a sturdy arm around his waist and leads him to the door, a string of nonsensical chatter leaving her in a rush as she tries to comfort him.

Behind them, the Darkness continues to ooze past the gate with a metallic shriek.


	5. Death by Corrosion

**October 5, 1931**

Peter glances up just in time to catch the giggling weight of his daughter, managing a tired smile as she nuzzles her smooth cheek against his neck. He hasn’t seen Malia in two days, and it must seem an eternity to the child. Corrine is standing a few feet away, the picture of cold elegance as she studies the sharp points of her nails.

“Mama took me to the park,” Malia crows, cheeks flushed with color. “We saw the leaves changing colors an’ duckies!”

“You did?” He tries to put excitement in his voice, doing his best to make her think how she spent her afternoon is the most important thing in Peter’s world. At best, it’s maybe tenth on a short list of things that he cares about. Malia is too young to notice the insincerity of his words, continuing to babble away and waving her hands in exaggerated motions.

“And then I threw a rock at an old lady!” Peter looks to his wife again with arched brows and she shrugs a shoulder in response.

“She was being rude,” Corrine says by way of explanation. “She’s lucky all Malia did was throw a rock at her.” Malia turns her big brown eyes back to Peter, expression as solemn as a three year old can manage.

“Mama says biting is a last resort.”

“Well, maybe not _last_ ….” Peter gives her a sharp look and she rolls her eyes with her entire body. “Okay, okay, but biting is definitely a good way of showing people that you don’t care for their opinions.”

“Your mama is a crazy woman,” he tells Malia, and his smile is genuine when she giggles this time. “Now, why don’t you go to my office and play for a bit and then I’ll take you home.” Malia pokes her lip out in a pout as he sets her down, but there’s no fit as she starts off down the hall.

“Is it safe letting her roam like that?” Corrine comes to stand next to him, watching their daughter skip away.

“The patients are locked in their rooms for the night. Let the girl have some fun gawking at them.” She scoffs, shaking her head in disbelief. “Relax, Cory, she’s a Hale. We’re bred to survive.” He presses her against one of the walls, mouthing at her neck and letting smug satisfaction roll through him when he feels her go malleable beneath his palms.

“Your family is bred for _trouble_ , Hale.” Her voice is a vibration against his lips, nails scratching lightly along the back of his shirt. “I need to get back to work.”

“Marcy can handle it.” He’s slowly making his way down towards her collarbones, beautifully angular things that bruise so wonderfully under his teeth. Dark red blossoms against brown, roses in freshly tilled earth. He wants to devour this wild thing, consume her until there’s nothing left except for the supernova beneath her skin.

“Marcy is currently home with her son. Apparently Elias has come down with this stomach bug that’s been circulating through his classroom.” Corrine shrugs and waves it off, no big deal for so small a child to be sick as long as the child isn’t theirs. “I’m the only competent person in the basement until she returns.”

“Why doesn’t her husband help her?”

“Szymon is useless and you know it.” And, yeah, Peter can’t necessarily argue against that logic. He only hopes Elias inherits his mother’s brains and common sense. Otherwise, the Stilinski line is doomed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Doctor Hale.” She pushes teasingly against his chest, not nearly as hard as she’s capable of.

“Daddy,” Malia shouts, and Peter’s turning his head to look behind him. She’s not standing in the lobby like he’d been expecting, not unless she’s hiding in the guard station. “Daddy, help me! Mama!” Corrine really does use all her strength to push him away this time, sending him toppling backwards to the floor as she sprints past him.

“Malia! Where are you?” There’s no immediate response and Peter’s heart is beating so violently that he’s surprised when it doesn’t shatter his ribcage like it’s made of confetti. He’s up and moving in seconds, chasing his wife through the institute.

“Mama! Mama, it hurts!” Her little voice echoes, bouncing off walls and seemingly coming from every direction at once.

“Mal!”

“Baby,” Peter screams, kicking open his office door and shattering the wooden frame. There’s a piece of notebook paper on the floor, covered in childish scribbles with droplets of ink from Peter’s pen, a single handprint against the gray carpeting. “Mal, are you in here?” He checks under his desk as Corrine hurries through the rows of offices, even going so far as to shove his filing cabinet out of the way in the off-chance Malia had wedged herself between it and the wall.

“Malia?” There’s a tremendous crash down the hall and the building seems to ripple under his feet, the force of it enough to send him stumbling against the wall to stay upright. The scream that follows haunts him even after he dies six days later.

They don’t find Malia.

+

Stiles glances up as Boyd and Erica come storming back into the bar area of the lobby, splotches of red decorating a hand towel that’s pressed against Boyd’s palms. Red mottles the front of his shirt as well, ripped in places to reveal abraded skin with flecks of gray caught in it. Erica is beautiful in her fury, like Hera on a quest for revenge in her bare feet and form-fitting dress.

“I take it that Derek got you with one of his little tricks.” It’s not phrased as a question, Stiles already having a pretty good idea. Sometimes Derek goes too far with these sorts of things, still a little boy with a morbid interest in how the body works, excited about small gushes of blood and the smell of oil as he begins working on a new ride.

“Whatever the fuck that was, it had nothing to do with your husband,” Erica snaps, baring sharp white teeth. Stiles thinks of wolves and jaguars and a crushing sense of doom. “Something dragged Boyd three hundred feet hard enough for his yarn to cut his hands!” Stiles doesn’t respond at first, more focused on how green the olive in his martini is. There’s also another of Matt’s camera’s in there, bobbing around like a dead fish.

“Come here, let me see your hands,” Jackson says, getting up and placing his tumbler of bourbon on a table. Boyd holds them out after a stern look from his girlfriend, a fine tremor running through them. Stiles leans forward over the bar, squinting to better make out the crisscrossing marks, overlaid in red and swelling. It looks like the bleeding has stopped at least.

“Does he need stitches? Cause I’ll use Derek like a battering ram to get us out of here and to a hospital.” She looks capable of doing it, too. Erica has that particular brand of ruthless loyalty that can translate to murder when necessary. Stiles likes that in a person, one of the few traits he can respect even if he doesn’t feel it towards his husband. He’d kill for his dad, Lydia, and Cora, but he’d just kill Derek.

“No, no. It looks worse than it is. Maybe have it checked out when we get out of here, but it’s nothing to worry about as long as we bandage it.” Jackson looks over his shoulder at Stiles, raising his brows. Stiles raises his own in return, not moving from his spot behind the bar. “Jesus Christ.” Jackson continues muttering under his breath as he walks through to another room, coming back with a linen table cloth that he’s tearing into strips. “First aid kit is under the bar, Erica.”

“On it.” She strides over and hip checks Stiles out of her way, grabbing the white metal box and giving him a glare of epic proportions before going back to the others.

“Are you guys sure it wasn’t Derek,” Stiles asks after a moment. “I mean, his tricks can get downright nasty sometimes. Dude nearly took my head off with a guillotine when we had that French-themed Halloween party two years ago.”

“And how sorry I was that you moved too soon,” Derek says, coming into the room with Lahey behind him. His pristine suit is covered gray dust. “What the fuck happened to you guys? Lahey showed me the saturation chamber and you two just took off.”

“What,” Boyd asks. “No, _you two_ pulled the disappearing act on us. We came back into that room and there was no sign of you. We thought you guys had gone through this little doorway, but the only footprints we saw were ours. Next thing I know, I’m being dragged through the halls like a fish on a hook.”

“Yeah, ghosts like fucking with people,” Lahey shrugs. “It’s kind of their thing. Sometimes they’ll move your stuff or confuse your perception to get you lost or drown you in a tank of blood the size of a Buick. I suggest you all avoid the last option, it’s just as bad as it sounds.”

“What are you even talking about, man? Ghosts?”

“Yep, and they still don’t compare to the Darkness. Unleash that and we’re all screwed.” He moves over to one of the stools and slumps onto it like he’s past exhaustion and heading straight for a full-blown panic attack, Stiles pushing the martini across the bar for the other man to drink. Lahey barely even pauses to remove the camera before downing the glass like a shot. “Keep ‘em coming.”

“You really didn’t have anything to do with this, Derek?” Boyd holds up his bandaged hands, the crisp linen speckled with blood.

“Hand to God,” Derek says, raising his right hand like some kind of Boy Scout. “I was with Lahey the entire time.”

“Did you at least find the master control so we can get out of here?”

“Nope, doesn’t seem to exist at all.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“Blame my great-grandfather. He’s the one that designed this death trap.” Derek swipes a hand roughly over his arm, stringy bits of dust floating to the ground like feathers. “Looks like we’re all stuck here until morning, so we might as well turn it into a group sleepover in here. I think splitting up would be a pretty bad idea.”

“Kind of like when the white jock of any horror movie gets drunk and wanders into the woods,” Stiles says dryly. “Unfortunately, our walking cliché has gone off on her own to investigate.”

“What? Where’d Kate go?”

“She said something about Peter’s missing daughter and your uncle Erik freaking out when they were teenagers.” The color seems to drain right out of Derek’s fast, leaving him a sick ashen color. Stiles glances away quickly, reminded for one heartbreaking moment of his mother, the ashen tone that faded to wax seconds before the heart monitor had flatlined.

“Lahey?”

“That would be upstairs in Peter’s old office. The old story is that he sent her up there to play while he talked shop with his wife. They heard her start screaming that someone was hurting her and took off in a frenzy. All they found was a half-finished drawing and an inky handprint.”

“How does a kid just go missing?”

“They searched this place top to bottom for six days; dragged patients out of their rooms, brutally interrogated them, and killed a few. Most people agree that the brutality of those final days is what triggered the riot. Malia Hale’s body wasn’t found even after this place was cleaned out.”

“My uncle told me that he saw a little girl here….” Derek trails off, eyes going misty as he remembers a happy childhood. Stiles had liked Erik Hale, liked all his tattoos and his rebel-without-a-cause attitude. Derek used to act like that until he had a stick surgically implanted in his ass. “He went in on a dare and said a little girl with glowing gold eyes tried to claw his eyes out.”

“Yup, sounds about right.”

“Then I guess we’d better go find Kate and hope she’s still got her eyeballs when we do.”

+

Kate isn’t the type to scare easy. She can count on one hand the times that real fear had curdled in her stomach and tried to squeeze the air from her lungs—the night of the Hale fire when she’d snuck back out of the house just thirty minutes before it went up, the day Victoria was murdered in cold blood right outside her home, and the day when Alli grabbed for a bear trap and Kate had yanked her away just before the thing could close around her little hand.

Her brother says she’s warped, but he says it with a fond smile and a pat to her cheek. Her mother had called her a freak, said it with hate in her eyes. Her father said she was just like him, and then he’d cracked her over the head with a bottle of Wild Turkey. Everyone has an opinion and none of them actually matter. Kate knows exactly who she is and that’s all that matters.

All that being said, she can feel tendrils of icy fear prickling up her spine like claws, trailing along each knob and leaving red marks in its wake. The second floor is creepy in a way that the first floor isn’t, cold and clinical and _barren_. There are rust stains on the railing along the wall, ceiling tiles missing to reveal leaky pipes that groan on occasion, and some sort of black gunk that’s been sprayed over a gray wall.

Kate keeps moving all the same, holding up her phone to capture everything. Even if she can’t get back on TV with her hunting show, she could always coerce her brother into writing a horror script with her and this place gives a lot of inspiration.

She stops at a dead end, the door on her left boasting a frosted glass window with a name printed along the bottom in gold flakes. _Peter Hale, Director_.

“And what are you hiding in your office, Petey?” The door opens with a loud crack as the swollen wood is forced out of the jamb, white paint embedded in the side from where it had been stuck. The office on the other side is almost disappointing, just plain white walls with stained carpeting that hasn’t been replaced in ages, the stale smell of it enough to make her nose scrunch up.

She brings her phone up all the same, laughing when she presses against the desk and it collapses to the ground with a cloud of soot. There’s a filing cabinet tilted on its side a few feet away, the metal blackened and warped from extreme heat.

Kate sweeps her phone in an arch to capture the broken windows with their jagged glass, the metal paneling that’s locking them all inside, and down to the black handprint standing out starkly against the matted gray carpeting. She kneels down to get a better look, lowering a hand to run over her new find and coming away stained with ink. It’s fresh, about the size of Allison’s hand.

A low, rumbling chuckle makes her stand straight up and spin around, phone up and ready to capture whoever startled her. There’s no one there, just the empty doorway that leads back out into the hall.

“Hello?” She takes a couple of steps forward, arching her neck to try and see if they’re hiding just beyond the busted frame. “Who’s there?”

“Haven’t you heard what happens to blonde girls that wander around in another person’s home?” She spins and nearly trips in her haste, a faint wisp of acrid smoke hanging in the air. Still, no one is hiding over there in the empty space.

“Jesus, I’m losing my mind.” A body presses flush against her left side and hot breath washes over her face, almost damp against her ear when the intruder speaks again.

“Then you’ve come to the right place, Miss Argent. I’m something of a specialist when it comes to treating insanity.” Kate’s head feels frozen in place on her neck, refusing to turn and look at the man that’s close enough for her to feel a burning cold coming off of him. There’s no heat in spite of the smoke. “I think I can squeeze you in.”

“A wonderful idea,” a woman says, teeth bared in a smile as she steps out of the shadows. She’s gorgeous, dressed in the bright white uniform of a nurse with a figure that would make Marilyn Monroe jealous, red lipstick smeared over her mouth like a gash. “You’re sick, dear. Not to worry, we’re going to make you all better.”

Fear rises up her throat like bile as a clawed hand grabs her throat, yanking her backwards into the shadows and smoke and dark things.

Kate Argent’s scream makes the building ripple and the Darkness _writhe_.


	6. Inquiring Minds

Derek paces the room like a caged wolf, tense and all too aware of everyone crowded in with him. Kate’s disappearance leaves a lot of questions up in the air, most of them having no reasonable answers other than Lahey’s mumbled _ghosts, goddammit_ after they found a pool of blood soaking into the carpet upstairs.

Either Kate really has been butchered, which is almost believable given the sheer amount of blood, or it’s all an act that will somehow end with Derek dead and Stiles in charge of Hale Industries. Which, no, fuck all of that. Derek will kill Stiles before he lets the family fortune fall into his hands.

“Good news,” Erica says after more than two hours of absolute silence. Her voice is jarring, breaking the quiet like a rock through a plate glass window. “I got Kate’s phone up and running again.”

“I helped,” Jackson grumbles, sitting on the floor beside her. They’ve had their heads together since everyone made it back downstairs, handing the dropped phone back and forth with no words exchanged in the interim. Boyd is across the room, nursing a glass of scotch that he’s barely touched.

“You were one of those kids that had to be the center of attention no matter what, weren’t you?”

“When you’re this good-looking people tend to pay attention.” He adjusts his jacket sleeve, the diamond cufflink catching the light and winking. Erica snorts good naturedly, shoving at his arm. She acts like they’ve been friends since high school instead of total strangers that were locked in a house together for going on five hours.

“The phone,” Boyd prompts, words slurred from having the glass pressed against his cheek.

“Right, the phone. Check this out.” Jackson gets up with a faint grunt heading over to the bar and propping the phone up against a jar of olives. The others migrate over and there’s an uneasy feeling making Derek’s gut clench. “This was taken right before she…. Disappeared.”

The screen is cracked through the middle and the audio is fuzzy from blood seeping into the speaker, but the video plays fine other than that. It’s the office, dark and dismal without any lighting, Kate’s voice coming out garbled. _“Hello? Who’s there?”_ The video shifts suddenly as Kate spins in a jerky circle, like she’s trying to keep someone in her line of sight with little success. _“Jesus, I’m losing my mind.”_ The phone drops to the ground with a clatter, Kate’s hand twitching against the ground followed by a violent spray of red and the scream that had everyone running up the stairs.

The screen goes black after that, her phone completely dead after being used almost constantly.

“Well, that was pretty useless,” Stiles says, tapping blunt fingernails against the bar top. It’s a peculiar rhythm, one Derek knows matches Stiles’ erratic heartbeat. It happens when he’s nervous or when he needs a dose of Adderall, when Stiles is feeling twitchy and caged. His gaze locks on Derek’s face, scrutinizing.

“What,” Derek snaps.

“Just wondering how you managed to pull this off since Matt faints at the sight of fake blood.”

“I didn’t do this, Stiles.”

“Sure, and you also didn’t try to electrocute me à la Addams Family Values.”

“That was accidental.” Derek feigns innocence, though he can’t help the little smirk that turns up the corner of his mouth. “I thought you’d want to listen to the radio while you were in the bath and I tripped over the cord.” He moves away from the bar and resumes his pacing, stretching the muscles along his shoulders. “Who’s to say that you aren’t behind this?”

“I was down here the entire time. Jackson can vouch for me.”

“And Lahey can vouch for _me_.” Stiles’ lips twist into a scowl, unattractive and nearly authentic. Derek would buy it if he were a different man, if he’d never met Stiles before today. “One of us is lying.”

“Or one of our guests is a closeted serial killer.” Derek sweeps his gaze over the room’s occupants, considering for a moment. Erica and Boyd _had_ disappeared down in the basement, but he doesn’t think either of them are actually capable of cold-blooded murder. Lahey might be persuaded, but he was with Derek the entire time that Kate was traipsing through the old asylum. That just leaves Stiles and Jackson.

“Doesn’t sound plausible.”

“You’re right about that.” It’s pure disdain that shadows Stiles’ face now, observing their guests like they’re bugs under a microscope. “None of these losers has a truly malicious bone in their body, which brings us back around to you.” Stiles rests his elbows on the bar so that his fists can support his chin, smiling like he’s interested. “So, did you and Kate sign some kind of contract or did you just flat out kill the bitch?”

“Neither one, darling mine.” The smile drops away and his eyes go cold, a predator through and through. It’s an expression Derek has become familiar with over the years, like a shark scenting blood.

“Cut the shit, Der. We all know the goal tonight is to have me dead.”

“Just going off the numerous times you’ve tried to kill me, I’d say you’ve got it backwards.” Stiles shrugs and grabs something from under the bar, bringing out one of the pistols from the casket in the next room. Derek can tell even from where he’s standing that the safety’s off as Stiles chambers a round. “What, you think you’re going to kill me with blanks?” The crack of the pistol is enough to set his ears ringing, his instinctive jerk allowing him to narrowly dodge a bullet that buries itself into the wall next to him.

It would have gone right between his eyes otherwise.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Erica shouts.

“What the hell are you thinking,” Boyd asks, yanking Erica beside him and out of the way. Stiles just smiles coldly, every inch the calculating sociopath that Derek knows he is. There’s a reason why John Stilinski stopped taking his kid to the range to practice.

“Sure is a funky old house,” Stiles says, voice even. “Ain’t it?” Derek can’t answer, busy trying to urge his thundering heart out of his throat. For one fraction of a second, he nearly pukes all over the pristine marble. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my room for what remains of the night.

“Hey, Stiles,” Derek calls, voice a harsh rasp. He stops near the stairs, one hand on the banister when he looks at Derek over his shoulder. “Don't stay up thinking of ways to get rid of me, it makes wrinkles.”

“Same to you, babe.”

“Sleep tight, Princess. Don’t let the ghouls bite.” Stiles cackles as he starts upwards, trailing long fingers against polished wood almost obscenely.

“The only ghoul in this house is you.”

Lahey is hunched in his chair, shoulders up around his ears and blue eyes glazed over. He’s breathing too hard and too fast, but Derek seems to be the only one to realize how deep in some sort of flashback the man is.

“I’m gonna go find a way out of this place,” Erica says. “Screw the million dollars.” She and Boyd stride out of the room, backs straight and shoulders squared like a couple of tin soldiers. Something tells Derek that this house is a whole lot meaner than some Jack-in-a-box, though. Jackson heaves out a sigh and grabs his phone, sliding his finger over the screen until his flashlight is working on the back.

“I guess I’m going to find Kate,” he says. “If you hear any more ominous screams it’s just me.” He shuffles out of the room, shouldering past Derek much harder than he needed to. Derek casts a glance in Lahey’s direction and relaxes when he realizes the man’s breathing is evening out. He’ll be fine.

Derek practically sprints to the third floor, tearing the door to the control open and speaking before his hand even hits the cold knob.

“What the fuck is going on,” he demands, face hot with anger. “Where’s Argent hiding?” When Matt doesn’t answer, Derek grabs his shoulder and spins him around in the chair, falling back against the wall in horrified disgust a moment later. “Oh, merciful God in Heaven….”

Matt’s face is gone, a red gash of jagged muscle and teeth left behind.

On the monitor a man in a stained lab coat is standing outside Stiles’ door, smirking up at the camera and waving with a surgical saw dripping gore.

+

Stiles is slow to wake, feeling a broad hand running over the smooth skin of his chest. It’s cold, almost like being caressed by an icicle. “Mm,” he moans, rolling to get away from the touch. “M’sleeping.” The hand is insistent, pulling him onto his back and groping along a thigh.

“Relax,” a man says, confident. “This is just going to sting for a second.”

Stiles’ thoughts are hazy and sluggish, barely realizing that his sleep pants have been shoved down enough to bare the skin of his upper thigh before the pain of a shot registers. His eyes fly open, making out a flash of blond hair and streaks that might have been blue eyes before it feels like his heart is ready to burst inside his chest.

And then Stiles falls away into cold blackness.

+

Erica glances up as the overhead lights begin to flicker erratically, dropping the poker she’d been trying to wedge under the metal plating. “What the hell is that?”

“No freaking clue,” Boyd says, wincing as a high-pitched buzz fills the air. It’s worse than tinnitus, a constant whine that has Erica grinding her teeth. “I think it’s coming from the basement.”

“All the more reason to stay up here.” Boyd looks torn, glancing at the sliver of black between the basement door and the jamb. Erica doesn’t want to go down there, not after what happened the last time. Something bad is hiding in the basement, something strong enough to drag two hundred pounds of struggling muscle without a hitch.

“It could be Kate.” Erica lets out a heavy sigh, running a shaking hand through her tangled hair.

“Why did I have to fall in love with fucking Lancelot?” She bends down and grabs the poker, liking the cold weight of it in her hands. Erica’s watched enough Supernatural to know that iron will make a ghost wish they’d never died. “I’m not going unarmed.”

“Neither am I.” He lifts his shirt to reveal the pistol from earlier tucked into his waistband, patting the grip. “Let’s get this over with.” Erica nods grimly, the pair moving in tandem down into the heart of the house. _No, not a heart, a stomach_. She remembers the show on Netflix, revolving around the Crain family and the grief a single house caused them. “You okay?”

“Is the basement like the Red Room?” Boyd goes rigid next to her, his thoughts jumping to the Haunting if Hill House episode that had made them bawl like babies. “Do we keep going down there so that this place can digest us?”

“I’m not going to let it swallow us whole,” Boyd promises, taking her hand in a tight grip. She’s never seen him look this serious before, this absolutely dedicated to a cause. “We’re getting out of here no matter what.” And Erica believes him with her entire being, like she believes in the magic of shooting stars. Boyd’s love for her is an absolute, just like her love for him. _The rest is confetti_.

“Let’s go rescue a TV star.” He cracks a smile that makes her warm all over, and they go down the stairs together, never letting go of each other.

Jackson and Derek are already downstairs when Erica and Boyd make it there, standing between the glass cases of yellowing plaster sculptures. Lahey joins them a second later at a dead sprint, shouldering his way past the group and yelling “electroshock” over his shoulder.

The halls seem to have changed since the last time they were down here; dead ends where there had been turns, doors where there had been smooth, soot-blackened walls. Lahey doesn’t hesitate even once, like he’s got a map built into his head, internal GPS that tells him exactly how to navigate the maze of halls until he’s skidding to a stop just past the doorway of a room.

It’s the room they’d explored two hours ago, complete with the heart drawn in the dust by Derek. The noise is louder in here and the lights seem fit to explode, but what makes Erica’s stomach churn is the person on the table. Stiles is flailing uncontrollably, arms and legs strapped into place so that his torso is thrown into convulsions and raspy screams of pain are torn out of his throat.

“Turn it off,” Derek yells. “Turn the goddamn thing off!” He lurches forward, Erica and Jackson catching him before he could touch Stiles. “Get him off that table! Turn it off!” Lahey and Boyd are flipping switches along the wall like a couple of mad scientists, working desperately to turn off the current running through Stiles mercilessly.

The noise and the flashing lights stop so abruptly that Erica doesn’t even realize until black spots invade her sight and the ringing in her ears fades away. Stiles is limp on the table, head covered with a leather helmet and a guard in his mouth to keep his teeth from breaking.

Derek moves slowly, fingers hesitating before unstrapping the helmet and pulling it off, the guard coming with it. Blood seeps from between Stiles’ lips, a dark ooze that gathers in a small pool next to his head. Jackson is the one to check for a pulse, lips pulled down into a solemn frown when he meets Derek’s gaze.

“No,” Derek says, shaking his head. “No, you just have to get his heart pumping again. You’re a doctor, do your fucking job!” But there’s nothing to be done and Jackson emphasizes this by taking a step back, hands going into the pockets of his suit jacket. It’s covered in dust by now, a speck of red staining the white cuff of his shirt. _Did he touch that side of Stiles’ mouth?_ Erica can’t remember.

“It’s the house,” Lahey says, softly apologetic. There are tears in his eyes and Erica can taste her own on her tongue. “I’m so sorry, Derek—”

“It’s not the house! This is good old-fashioned _homicide_ and one of you bastards is responsible!” His jaw is twitching spasmodically, teeth bared in a snarl. “The second I find out who’s responsible, they’re getting the same treatment Stiles got.”

“The only one here that wanted Stiles dead is you,” Erica accuses, taking a threatening step forward. “You made that very clearly several times in just the past few hours, Hale. Why should we believe this wasn’t your fault?” She flings out a hand to gesture at the corpse, anger burning in her chest.

“Why would I kill my husband when we’re locked in a house and surrounded by witnesses? I like to think I’m a little smarter than all that. Besides, I caught someone on the cameras that hadn’t come through the front door.”

“What’d they look like,” Lahey asks, scratching harshly at a wrist. Erica doesn’t even think he’s aware of doing it, a tic that appears when the poor guy is stressed beyond his limit. “The intruder, I mean.”

“Short guy in a white lab coat, he had stubble and this grin that would make anyone wanna punch him in the mouth.”

“Yeah, that’s Peter.” Lahey rubs a hand over his jaw, tears sliding down his cheeks.

“It’s not a ghost, it’s an asshole!” Derek brings his own pistol out of his jacket, waving it wildly as he gestures at everyone in the room. He doesn’t move from Stiles’ side the entire time, not once. “Who the fuck hired this guy? How’d you sneak him past my man watching all the cameras?”

“Put the gun down,” Jackson demands, thick brows drawing together over his eyes.

“I’ll put it down when we get some cops here to read you freaks your Miranda rights.”

“Put it down,” Boyd says. “Or I’ll make you put it down.” Erica meets his eyes for a flash of a second, tightening her grip on the poker as the idea dawns on her. Like they’d both expected, Derek turns to face Boyd fully and keeps the pistol even with his head, finger hesitating over the trigger.

“I’d like to see you try.” Erica doesn’t give him a chance to squeeze the trigger, batting the pistol out of his hand and then bringing the poker up and to the left to connect with his head. Derek drops like a sack of bricks, crumpling to the ground with a low moan.

“Ladies and gentlemen, _that_ is why you don’t piss off my girlfriend.”


	7. Better Living Through Electricity

Locking a concussed Derek Hale in the saturation chamber probably wasn’t the smartest decision to be made that night, but Boyd can’t bring himself to actually give a damn. As far as he knows, the guy is totally off his rocker and should stay locked up for the next ten to twenty years for the murder of his husband.

“I think we took a wrong turn,” Boyd says, frowning as he looks behind him. He and Erica have been wandering the basement for twenty minutes now, trying to find a way out and not having much success. Lahey had disappeared around a corner mumbling about a hidden stash of booze in a supply room, feet shuffling noisily against the rough concrete.

“Our wrong turn was getting in that limo this evening,” Erica says, stopping and turning her flashlight left and right. She’s looking for a map, a thread of red yarn, _anything_ that will lead them back upstairs where it’s slightly safer. The beam of it catches on chipped white paint covering a door to her right, a smudge of writing catching Boyd’s eye.

“Wait, shine the light on the door again.” Erica turns it the way he’s pointing, the smudge turning into semi-legible words. The black paint has nearly vanished over the years and the words seem like gibberish— _r. Cor ne ale ffi_. He draws in a sharp breath when he puts the pieces together, fills in the blanks like he does in the weekly crossword puzzle.

“What the hell does it say?”

“Dr. Corrine Hale’s Office.”

“As in creepy electroshock lady?”

“The same creepy electroshock lady that might have a map of the basement hanging up in her office.” Erica shoves the door open with barely more than a grunt, leading the way inside with her teeth bared in a smile. “Alright, you crazy bitch, where’d you hide your goodies?”

“I’ll check over here.” Boyd sticks to the front half of the office, shoving yellowed papers and all file folders out of his way as Erica empties desk drawers onto the surface of the desk. Unlike the rest of the house, there’s no presence of the fire in here, just an old room that’s been closed up for too long.

There’s a scent that hangs heavy in the air, like old books mixed with mold that makes Boyd want to gag whenever he digs through a new stack of papers. He ignores the way Erica begins to curse after a sneezing fit, only arching an amused brow in her direction after she throws a child’s teddy bear on the desk and a plume of dust hits her square in the face.

“Not a word,” she grumps, pointing a red-polished nail in his direction. “I took my allergy pills this morning just like the doctor said to. This place is just filled with dust, is all.” He hums in response, smiling as he turns back to his pile of old junk.

Sitting on top, like it belongs and has always been there despite having _not_ been there five seconds ago, is a frame. It isn’t a large thing by any means, the glass intact and covered in a thin layer of grime that’s easily wiped away on his jacket sleeve. What stares back at him is a group photo near the bottom and seven individual faces above the group shot with names and titles printed beneath them.

“Check this out, Eri.” She tosses a pen to the side and comes over to him, shining the flashlight down on the picture. “Class of 1931.”

“They look exactly as nuts as I thought they would.” Boyd studies the picture, taking in faces and names and realizing at about the same time as Erica that he knows how that damn guest list was made.

“Holy shit….”

“Corrine Blake-Hale, head of electroshock,” Erica reads, the disbelief coloring her voice so explicit that it could be used the explain the phrase _what the entire fuck_ to a group of old people. “Peter Hale, Director. Joseph Boyd, pathology. Marie-Jeanne Argent, lobotomy. Marcelina Stilinski, electroshock. You all have a relative that was connected to this place.”

“The five who didn’t die,” Lahey says, and he smirks when Boyd jumps so badly that his elbow slams into the wall.

“Damn, man,” he complains, rubbing his elbow. “I’m gonna put a bell on your ass.” Lahey leans against the doorframe, the liquor from earlier loosening him up just enough to make him look less like an anxious mess. He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out in one big gust of air, the smell of bourbon washing over Boyd and making his stomach curdle.

“The house made the friggin’ guest list or the ghosts did. My money’s on Peter since he’s a _vengeful, stupid whore_.” He kicks at a chair, the old wood collapsing onto its side in a pile of broken limbs and splinters. “It got its five victims here, plus me because my family is fucking cursed or whatever. The house wants a complete set for the staff photo of 2018.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Erica says, shaking her head.

“Why not? It’s as good a theory as any.”

“But there were seven of us altogether. Why would Whittemore get invited if the house didn’t want him here?”

+

The halls of the basement have that unsettling presence of changing, of shadows writhing in the corner of your eye and statues jeering from behind their glass cases. He grits his teeth and keeps going, though, encouraged by the thought of being half a billion dollars richer. Eventually he lands in familiar territory, the hospital’s old morgue holding a steel table with Stilinski’s body laid up on it.

Jackson thinks of an unlit pyre, an interrupted funeral. 

Jesus Christ.

As he steps up to the table and pulls a black kit out of his pocket, he wonders how this became his life. He hated this kid back in high school, used to bully him, and now he’s _helping_ Stilinski—because he’ll always be _Stilinski_ in Jackson’s mind, never _Stiles_. Stilinski, the Sheriff’s little delinquent who talks too much and crashes around three o’clock after his Vyvanse wears off.

Somehow, miracle of miracles, the smartass little shit lands the hottest guy in Beacon Hills—second to Jackson, of course—and ends up able to buy Jackson’s allegiance when, only fourteen years ago, Stilinski could only dream of having enough money to get his crappy Jeep working. To top it all off, he still has that crappy Jeep and talks to it like it understands him.

And now here they both are, thirty years old and locked in an insane asylum.

He reiterates— _Jesus Christ_.

Scowling, Jackson pulls down Stilinski’s sleep pants until the plush flesh of his thigh is revealed, a tiny little pinprick showing where he’d shot Stilinski up an hour ago. He feels around, finding a good spot before opening his kit and setting to work. A quick swipe of an alcohol pad and a relatively small dose of Physostigmine later, Stilinski is trying to jerk upright off the table.

Jackson grabs him and pins him down quickly, holding him in place until he realizes what’s going on. Stilinski relaxes after that, lying boneless on the table and letting Jackson do a quick check-up.

“How’s it look, Doc,” he asks, hoarse. There are dark bruises under his eyes, but his pallor is returning to normal and his heartbeat is in a steady rhythm again.

“Healthy as a horse.” Jackson puts his kit back in his pocket, making a mental note to dispose of the needle when he gets a chance. “The Atropine worked like a charm.” Stilinski sits up slowly, pulling his pants back up where they settle low on his hips. “According to all the others, you are a very dead man.”

“Speaking of the dead, how’s my husband doing?”

“Still alive. We’ve got him locked in a saturation chamber and I turned it on before I came to check on you. Makes a hell of a light show.” Stilinski smirks at that, the expression not reaching his eyes. They look darker all the way down here, dead. “I’ve got five bucks that says Erica will be the one to knock him off.”

“That’s a good bet. What about that TV chick? The one that basically eye-fucked Derek when we first met her?”

“Kate’s still missing.” Remembering that scream, the way it seemed to fill the entire building with nerve-wracking terror, makes a violent shiver race through Jackson’s body. How could anyone even produce a sound like that without tearing their vocal chords in the process? How could anyone hear it and look as unaffected as Stilinski had at the time? The way he does right now?

“So she could be spying on us right this very instant?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Stilinski arches his brows and makes an impatient gesture for Jackson to continue. “All that blood we found, nobody could live long without it. There had to be at least two pints of it on the walls alone. Kate’s dead and I’m pretty sure Derek’s responsible.”

“Except the police won’t believe that for an instant if they can’t find her body.” He slides off the table, his bare feet making an obscene sound when they smack to the floor. “It’s gonna be hard enough to convince them that me faking my death was just a prank I was pulling on my husband, Jackson. And what if those idiots out there don’t ever pull the trigger?”

“They will—”

“They locked him in a goddamn chamber! They’re on edge around him, suspicious, but they’re not scared! They have to believe they’re in actual danger before they’ll shoot Derek.” He lets out a sharp hiss of air, nimble fingers playing over the surgical tray facing away from Jackson.

“Then what do you want to do, Stilinski? I’m all out of ideas here. I’m just the medical knowhow.” Stilinski doesn’t say anything for a long while, content to play with the rusted equipment left behind. As far as Jackson’s concerned, he’s done his part in all of this. He’s earned his half of Derek’s life insurance policy and intends to take Danny on that honeymoon they didn’t have time to take five years ago.

“We need another body….” Stilinski turns slowly, all relaxed grace with something in his fist that winks in the low lighting. “And we need to paint Derek as a crazed serial killer in the process. Any volunteers?”

And then Stilinski’s arm is swinging, and a burning pain erupts in Jackson’s belly.

+

Peter Ian Hale is a man of very simple needs, and fuck Corrine if she snorts and rolls her eyes whenever that sentence leaves his mouth. He _is_ , dammit. All he needs in life to be happy is his baby girl, a willing person in his bed, a sharp scalpel, and somebody to torture. Two out of four isn’t bad.

Stiles Stilinski is a master with the scalpel Peter had left in the morgue, skillfully turning the Whittemore man’s torso into a gory mess of dark red blood and pink muscle, flaying him open with a serene smile turning up his lips. The boy looks uncannily like his great-grandmother, a near perfect replica in all the most wonderful ways.

As if sensing Peter’s presence, Stiles pauses in his work and turns brown eyes in the ghost’s general direction. They’re the color of old whiskey, of sunshine catching on honey with flecks of darker brown caught in the irises. Peter wants to devour him and hold Stiles’ power inside him.

“I know you’re there,” Stiles says, eerily calm. “Why don’t you come out and play?” Peter steps further into the room, still invisible and achingly curious. Will this boy scream like the Argent girl had? Or maybe he’ll be intrigued, maybe those wonderful eyes will glow like fireflies in summer.

“You’re trying to make your husband look guilty,” Peter asks, appearing flush against Stiles’ back. The boy tenses for the briefest of seconds, but then he’s all relaxed muscles and beautifully, heartbreakingly _warm_. God, Peter misses being warm. Not the flames, though, never the flames that melted his flesh off his bones and made the Darkness thrive.

“Uh-huh.” Stiles presses against the phantom and Peter growls low in his throat at the feeling. “Any ideas, Doctor Hale?” Stiles is looking at him over the smooth curve of his shoulder, dark lashes tickling Peter’s cheek. The boy is the tall one in this dynamic, but so is Corrine. Peter finds height doesn’t much matter when it comes to taking the person apart piece by piece.

“Remove the head. The torso will make transport awkward and it’ll make an unseemly mess.”

“But the police will need the body, too. How else will they know Derek is totally responsible?”

“The police don’t matter, sweetheart.” Stiles shivers as Peter’s breath fans over his ear, a barely there reaction. Interesting. “Your companions only need to see him bloody from cradling a severed head before they’re ready to start shooting. Trust me, I’m a bit of an expert in these matters.” Stiles makes a considering sound, blood-slick fingers leaving four trails of red where they brush along Peter’s cheek.

“Help me with it.” Peter nods at the surgical saw and Stiles grabs it, letting out a shaky breath when Peter’s cold hand covers his and guides the saw to Whittemore’s thick neck. Stiles’ breathing grows heavier as they start to saw, the fingers of his free hand coming up to dig into Peter’s hair, blunt nails scratching at his scalp.

Peter leans into the touch, grinding against Stiles’ ass like a teenager. Cory used to joke that his self-control was the worst trait about him, and he can spot her just over Stiles’ shoulder, hand brought up to smother her laughter. He bares his teeth at her, a vicious smile that she returns wholeheartedly.

Stiles will be a fun little plaything once he’s been devoured by the house. A bloodthirsty heathen to keep the boredom away until the real Jennifer Blake shows up. The Reyes girl is entertaining, and her boyfriend is exactly the one Peter wanted, but four out of five survivors isn’t nearly enough right now. Peter wants the whole set.

Whittemore’s head comes free with a sickening tearing of ligament and their joined hands are covered in gore, but Stiles is arching against Peter and it’s taking all of the spirit’s control not to bend the boy over the corpse and drive into him, prep be damned. He manages though, grinding his teeth as he releases the saw and steps away, materializing next to his wife.

“Go and put that where it belongs, Stiles. My wife and I will be a bit…. Occupied for the next hour or so.” Corrine smiles when he pins her to the wall, the skirt of her dress lifting when it catches on his wrists, legs smooth and cool to the touch.

Peter barely registers Stiles leaving or the inky shadow following just a little too out of sync to belong to him.

+

“You know,” Lahey says, shuffling along behind Boyd and Erica. “I’m _really_ wishing I had just bricked up the basement door when I had a chance last week. Our lives would be so much simpler right now if I had.”

“Not gonna argue with you there,” Erica says. They’ve been searching for Jackson for an hour now, calling out his name and just generally cursing the idiocy of ex-frat boys. Lahey takes the next left that brings them into the morgue, coming to a jolting stop in the doorway.

“Well, that’s certainly not a good sign.”

“What?” Erica’s flashlight illuminates the room better than the halogen light flickering weakly overhead. The table where Stiles had been laid is a bloody mess, a surgical saw discarded in the leftover gore. There’s nothing else, no body to have made such a mess, only a pair of bloody footprints leading out of the room.

“Holy God,” Boyd mutters behind her, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. “Please tell me this is just some weird hallucination from breathing in mold.”

“Wish it was, babe.” Erica sucks in a deep breath, sudden realization hitting her like a boot to the stomach. “That blood’s really fresh, right?” Lahey and Boyd both nod, the former gagging at the coppery scent invading the room. “Too fresh to have come from a corpse?”

“Oh Jesus…. You don’t think—”

“That Derek used his engineering degree to bust out of an old metal chamber and then beheaded Jackson? That’s exactly what I think.”

“You’re gonna make us go find him, aren’t you,” Lahey asks, looking exhausted beyond all measure. He’s already sprinted past his breaking point and dove headfirst into a fuzzy sort of resignation. Erica knows the feeling well by now, her feet aching in her boots and a migraine eating away at the space between her eyes. “What even is my life?”

“I’ll let you know when I get it figured out, bud,” Boyd says, clapping a hand on Lahey’s shoulder. The slighter man flinches away from it at first, but slowly relaxes when he realizes that Boyd means no harm. “Lead the way to the saturation chamber.”

Lahey frowns and stalks ahead of them, shoving his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket. It’s a hand-me-down made from cheap material in an ash gray that doesn’t suit him and clashes horribly with the scarf he refuses to take off, the left shoulder fraying and one of the buttons on the front completely missing.

When they get out of here—because Erica has to think in _when_ ’s instead of _if_ ’s—she’s going to take Lahey shopping with Jennifer Blake’s credit card collection.

“Hey, there’s someone in there.” Erica jolts out of her thoughts and focuses her gaze on the circular window set into the chamber, a face smushed tightly against the glass. “Is that Jackson? But then who got dismembered back there?” Boyd turns the hand-crank and pulls the door open, the faint thud of Jackson’s head falling to the ground answering all of Lahey’s questions. It bounces once, rolling until glassy eyes are fixed on where Erica is shining her flashlight on it.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” she mutters, clutching at her stomach with her free hand. She’s really glad she refused those cashews six hours ago. “We have to find Derek and hogtie his ass until morning.”

“This place is huge, he could hide in the basement alone for three months without being found—”

“So we’ll split up.”

“Baby,” Boyd says, taking her arm in a gentle hold,” that is the single whitest sentence to ever leave your mouth. Splitting up to search for a crazed murderer with no moral compass is a job better left to the police. I say we go upstairs, barricade the basement door closed and hangout in the lobby until help shows up.”

“Derek found a way to break out of a sealed chamber and you think shoving a desk in front of a wooden door will keep him from using our skin as lampshades?”

“I never should have let you watch American Horror Story. Our lives have just gone downhill since then.” Boyd runs a hand over his mouth, scratching absently at the stubble along his jaw before heaving out a sigh. “Fine, we’ll go look for Hale, but we’re sticking together. I’m not about to be the token black guy that gets butchered in some kind of cheesy nineties horror flick.”


	8. For Those who Survive the Night

Derek is barely functioning as he stumbles against a stack of moldy boxes near the stairs, blinking sluggishly from the tacky blood covering his hands and shirt to the trio standing not five feet away from him. It’s like being high, he thinks, mind slowing to a quiet hum in his skull and all the firing neurons in the world can’t change it.

“Erica,” he asks, tongue heavy in his mouth. He thinks he might have bitten it at some point, but he can’t remember. His time in the chamber is a vague blur dancing just out of his line of sight, a whirring of monochrome colors and Stiles’ cooing voice urging for him to stand, for him to _hold_ — And it stops there, just dead ends without any sort of warning.

Nothing but the blood left behind and the remains of Kate Argent he’d found in a metal case, displayed like the statue Peter had loved above all the others.

“Stay where you are!” His thoughts jump back to the present, to the blonde woman aiming a pistol at him. His brows furrow and his hands come up in a gesture of peace on pure instinct rather than any sort of understanding. Can’t they see he’s unarmed? That there’s something horribly wrong in his mind?

“What happened?” He tries to take an unsteady step forward, but Erica shouts again and the muscles in his legs lock into place. “I remember…. I…. Where’s Stiles? Why isn’t he with you?” Derek takes another few steps forward, more an ambitious shambling than anything.

“I said stay back!”

“But I don’t—” Gunfire is shockingly loud in the basement, and Derek can feel the bullet as it grazes his ear and buries itself in the boxes behind him, papers pouring down like an avalanche of snow. He turns to look at them for a moment, thinking of the honeymoon in Bern and the way Stiles had smiled so beautifully in the winter sunlight. “Erica, please—”

The next bullet actually makes him stumble backwards half a foot, knocking the air right out of him. Erica looks terrified across the way, but her hands are steady, and the pistol remains even with his chest. And she fires again and again and _again_ until the magazine is empty, and Derek has collapsed against those boxes, sending more paper sliding to the dirty floor.

The pain is bruising and there’s part of his mind that’s still functioning that’s supremely proud of the sleek Kevlar he has on under his shirt, but the main part of him is just blank surprise. She’d _shot_ him. She’d shot him _fourteen goddamn times_. He’s a little proud of her if he’s being completely honest.

+

Stiles waits where the shadows are thickest as Boyd and Lahey usher Erica up the stairs, each of them gripping one of her arms like they’re afraid she’ll crumble away into dust if they’re not holding her steady. Like she’s a kite and they’re the line keeping her from floating away on a strong breeze.

His gaze focuses back on his husband, something like sadness pulling on his heart.

Stiles remembers how it felt to be in love, the way his stomach tied itself into knots whenever Derek smiled his way or how he felt like his legs were turning into Jell-O when Derek dropped down to one knee and held up the most gorgeous ring of white gold that Stiles had ever seen. Stiles remembers that and, sometimes, he misses those early days when everything was autumn sunshine and leaves crunching under sneakers.

Fourteen years later all he feels when he looks at Derek is the urge to stab him with a fork.

Instead of acting on the urge, however, Stiles creates walls around himself and watches Derek do the same. There are occasions when the pair get along, destroying a competitor or just wanting an orgasm or two in order to sleep through the night.

And now here they are, Derek slowly bleeding out on a pile of musty documents and Stiles set to inherit a billion in life insurance money and an entire fucking company. He and Cora can split that part of this whole mess, she can return to South America to save the starving puppies or whatever and Stiles can return to Bern and snow-capped mountains.

He moves out of the darkness and over to Derek at a sedate pace, taking his sweet time as he kneels down in front of his husband. The color has drained out of Derek’s cheeks, making the black of his short beard look like a pool of ink against fresh paper. He’s still warm under Stiles’ fingers when he brushes them over the curve of a cheekbone, almost like he’s still alive.

“I used to love you, you know,” he says, a late confession. “I used to think you hung the moon and all the stars and all the galaxies. We could have parted as friends if you would have just agreed to a divorce.” Stiles chuckles, a sound like the shuffling of paper. “Seems like we both cared about the money too much, huh? It always was the more attractive part about you.”

“Is that a fact, Princess,” Derek growls, a limp hand shooting up to grasp Stiles’ wrist. The pain of it is nearly as shocking as Derek’s revival, Stiles’ mouth falling open in a choked off squawk.

“How the fu—”

“I’m Derek _goddamn_ Hale!” He stands and jerks Stiles up with him, shoving him backwards against a cage. The pain, the _violence_ , is jarring. Derek has never been this rough with him before, not even when Stiles had tried to murder him. It had been their little game and Stiles had _won_. He had the victory trophy in his hands just two seconds ago.

Stiles pushes away from the metal grating that’s digging into his back, making a run for the stairs and getting a whole two feet before a strong hand grabs his neck and pins him back against the cage. The pressure is just enough to make breathing difficult and Derek’s eyes seem to glow in the dim light.

“Did you really think I didn’t keep tabs on everything you did, Stiles? I have every phone call, every text message you and Jackson ever sent saved on a flash drive just waiting to be handed over to the cops.” Stiles kicks out but Derek is already moving, shoving Stiles to the unforgiving concrete.

“Der, please….”

“What is it, dear heart?” Stiles can’t get up, not with Derek’s foot planted between his shoulder blades. Stiles’ face is sore where its pressed against the concrete, the skin red and irritated.

“What are you gonna do to me?” There’s a dry chuckle above his head and then the foot is gone, replaced by gripping hands that flip him roughly onto his back so that Stiles can see Derek standing over him. There’s a harsh gleam to his eyes, hard as marble and he glares down at Stiles. It’s something he’s never seen before and the dawning realization is unexpected; all this time, Derek had just been toying with him. He’d never actually wanted to kill Stiles, just torment him. But now, _now_ Stiles is stuck in uncharted territory.

“I’m gonna do what I’ve already been accused of, Stiles. I’m gonna murder you.” He hauls Stiles up by his hair, blunt nails digging punishingly into his scalp until there’s blood moving in slow trails along the side of Stiles’ head.

“Witnesses!”

“That’s the beauty of it! You’re already dead!” Stiles lets out a shout of pain as he’s tossed against a wall that’s halfway sealed off, the bricks crumbling under his weight and sending him back to the floor. Stiles groans low in his throat, eyes squeezed shut as pain bursts along his temple.

His hand moves blindly at his side, pausing a moment as it moves over something brittle. It takes him a good minute to force his eyes open, squinting down at the bed of leaves he’s landed on top of. _Why the fuck are there leaves in the basement?_

“Stiles?” He doesn’t respond, just rolls onto his back and brings the leaf up over his head to see it better. The light is dim here, reflecting off something metal on the walls. His gaze flicks to it, finding the rusted leg of a chair poking out from…. Fabric? The whole wall and the ceiling, all of it seems to be made up of mangled straightjackets and office parts and bricks, wheelchairs and busted desks and something that’s black and _moving_.

The _thing_ is sliding over the floor, writhing along the concrete like a particularly fat snake or fog that’s not quite strong enough to roll in. It’s gaining mass, though, and soon it’s thick enough to hide the wet floor from Stiles’ gaze. He stands on shaky legs and backs away from it, an old bolt of anxiety spearing through his chest.

Stiles has never been afraid before. He didn’t even think he was capable of it until just now. It’s like a vice around his spine, freezing him in place even as the dark vapor inches closer and closer, sizzling where it brushes his pants.

“Derek,” he asks, voice hoarse,” is this one of your tricks?”

“No.” The shakiness to Derek’s tone has Stiles glancing over at him, taking in the stiff set to his shoulders and the outstretched hand. It’s like he’s trying to use the Force in order to get Stiles out of that hidden room. Stiles wishes that was possible right about now. “Stiles, you need to get out of there.”

“I can’t.” His back is literally against a wall, the bricks damp with years of muck, seeping through his shirt and making his skin prickle. The vapor is creeping, Stiles knows this, but it seems to move so fast compared to his uncooperating limbs.

“Stiles, move!” But he can’t, gaze stuck on that void as it begins to roll over his bare feet. It burns and there’s a scream stuck in his throat, but all Stiles can do is watch as the vapor climbs steadily upwards. “Stiles!”

Blistering pain makes Stiles tremble and his knees buckle, sending him falling to the ground with a breathless gasp. The impact seems to knock the scream loose and he lets it out in a bone-shaking howl that makes his throat ache and bleed. He’s vaguely aware of another echoing cry, a multitude of them as the darkness slides over his shoulders. The screaming reaches a crescendo and then the vapor is crashing over his head, the noise dimming and dropping away until Stiles can only hear one voice, cold and frighteningly familiar.

 _Chaos is come again_.

+

Erica is halfway to a nervous breakdown when she hears fists beating against the basement door and a voice screaming to be let in. Is it guilt that’s morphing that voice into Derek’s? Has this place driven her crazy enough that she’s living in some Tell Tale Heart remake? But then Lahey’s moving to the door and it’s a confirmed fact that he’s hearing it too.

“Is that Hale,” Boyd asks. The pole he and Lahey have been trying to pry open a steel panel is gripped loosely in one of his hands, the flat tip of it scraped and abused.

“How’s he still alive,” Lahey asks, wrapping reluctant fingers around the doorknob. There’s another vicious thumping on the door and the sound of splintering wood on the other side, urging Lahey into motion. He swings the door open to reveal the yawning mouth of the basement, and Stiles.

The man stands there in quiet for a long moment, the only color on him belonging to the red marks around his throat and the purple bruises under eyes that are totally devoid of life. It’s like staring at a walking corpse. Stiles smirks, and then vapor is enveloping him like a Rorschach test made up of spilled oil, tendrils snaking out and yanking Lahey into the heart of the thing too quick for the man to even scream.

_Yep, and they still don’t compare to the Darkness. Unleash that and we’re all screwed._

Lahey’s words from earlier make all the sense in the world now, but they’re too late to do him any good as the mass of writhing shadows is sucked back down into the basement. Derek lurches out into the hall seconds before the door is slammed shut, his shirt ripped at the collar and stained with filth.

“Run,” he shrieks, sprinting for the stairs. “Have to get out!” Down the hall, the door is pulsing outwards, like a beating heart.

“I say we follow Hale,” Erica says, barely more than a whisper. Boyd nods and grabs Erica’s wrist, the pole left behind as they follow after Derek. It’s like being stuck in a nightmare, the sensation of not being able to run fast enough, to get away from the monster she knows is waiting for her down in the dark.

“Come on! We need to move!” The architecture has changed again, halls shifted as the oil-slick creature snakes after them along the floor, spilling out over splintered wood and crumbling stone. Everything it touches goes up in smoke, burning away until it’s consumed into the Darkness.

“What’s going on?”

“The house is alive and we’re all going to die!” Derek rounds a corner a little too sharply, nearly losing his balance before Boyd and Erica each grab onto his arm. Derek looks ready to explain in vivid detail, but the words seem to die on his tongue as crackling starts up down the hall. Back the way they came, the Darkness is seeping into the walls, the architecture crumbling in on itself until it forms a mouth, wooden beams gnashing together like teeth.

“Attic,” Boyd asks, already pulling on Erica’s wrist.

“Attic sounds good, yeah.” Derek takes off down the hall again, sprinting ahead of them and totally missing the way the floor begins to _explode outward what the actual fuck?_

Boyd tightens his hold on her and doesn’t let go, taking random turns until the pair of them finally— _finally_ —make it back into the lobby. There’s still glass scattered over the floor from the broken mural, a large shard sticking up out of the table where Stiles had nearly died hours ago.

God, how long have they been stuck in this house?

“Up here,” Derek hollers, head poking out of the ceiling on the second-floor landing. “And you’d better hurry!” Boyd and Erica take the stairs two at a time, barely registering the fact that the howling wind has disappeared with a faint _pop_ like a champagne cork.

“Erica, where are you going,” a voice asks.

Erica pauses near the top of the staircase, daring a look over her shoulder. Kate is standing at the bottom of the stairs, more a black and white projection than anything. She flickers in an out of view, face slowly changing until suddenly it’s Stiles that’s looking up at them.

“You can run,” he says, a low drawl that rolls off his tongue like molasses. He’s smirking, but his eyes are dead, just black sockets in a gray face. A skeleton. “But you can’t hide. I’ll find you, Eri, and then I’ll burn you just like the others.”

“Fucking try it,” Erica screams down at it. Rage swallows up her fear as the thing shifts again, Jackson grinning up at them. His teeth are too sharp and his eyes flicker first green and then black. _Fear is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway._

“Come on,” Boyd urges, tugging her along the rest of the way up the stairs.

The ladder that leads up into the attic is a rickety thing that leaves a nasty splinter in Erica’s palm, but that’s nothing compared to the stitch in her side. Every breath she manages to suck in _burns_ , like her lungs are overfull and not nearly full enough. It’s an agony she’s never felt before, not like the deep ache of her muscles after she’s had a seizure.

Boyd pulls the ladder up after them once they get to solid ground again, the trap door slamming shut and the metal latch holding when she slides it home.

The attic itself is nothing to write home about, missing the grand archways and artfully styled theme of downstairs. The floor is simple planks of wood and the only clutter seems to be machinery that controls the metal plates; giant cogs and wheels and pulleys, one section raised just enough for a person to slip out of.

“Light,” she says, smacking at Boyd’s arm until he’s following her gaze. “We got light! We got a way out!” It’s held open by one of the pulleys, a wonderfully simple thing made up of rope and sheet of metal to serve as a counterweight. “Come on, we can make it.”

“Wait, where’s Derek?”

“A little busy at the moment,” Derek yells. He’s across the basement, twenty feet away from the opening and covered in dust. Between them, snaking between the planks and boxes, the Darkness is unfurling into the room. “I’m not gonna make it….” He looks resigned to the fact, a grim set to his mouth as he stands there and just watches as his death rolls through the floor like mist.

“Just run, man! C’mon!” Derek shakes his head, squaring his shoulders. “Come on, Eri. I’m getting you out.” She hesitates for a moment, watches as Derek’s sucked into the Darkness with a faint hiss of smoke. There’s a moment where they can see an outline of Derek, a faint silhouette inside the void, and then there’s nothing left behind but ash that’s swept through the opening.

“Outside,” Erica says, shoving and pulling until Boyd is kneeling down next to their escape route. Tendrils reach out, wrapping around the rope and starting to burn through it. Erica presses her shoulder into Boyd’s back, pushing him outside right as the panel slides shut.

She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out through her nose, leaning her back against the cold metal. Boyd made it out alive and that’s all that matters to her. As long as he’s safe, she can face down this thing and have zero regrets. Erica can feel the corner of her mouth lift in a smile, a smug thing as Stiles appears in front of her again.

“Did you really think I’d let you get away that easily,” he asks.

“Can we just skip the monologue, buddy?” His head tilts to the side, a vulpine movement of curiosity. She can practically see the questions behind his eyes, in the way he tilts his body forward just the slightest bit. It makes her feel powerful, the sway she has over this thing even if it’s only infinitesimal.

“You’re not scared?”

“I’ve made it a point not to let little bitches like you intimidate me.”

“Hey, asshole,” calls another voice, one Erica never thought she’d hear again. It gets Stiles’ attention as well, the possessed body turning to find Lahey standing a few feet away. He’s got the remains of the pulley clenched in his fists, glimmering in and out of focus. “I hope you’re prepared to deal with a thousand years of bad Star Trek puns and sass ‘cause you’re stuck with me now.”

 _“No!”_ Lahey yanks down on the rope and the plate slides upwards, a pair of strong arms wrapping around Erica’s waist and yanking her outside seconds before the panel slides shut again.

Erica breathes in deep gulps of fresh air, smelling salt and water on the breeze from the beach below. Overhead, the sky has begun to turn blue with the pink and orange of sunrise melting away, the precursor to a warm afternoon. She and Boyd lay against each other on the ledge, two hundred feet in the air and unable to muster a single fuck about anything.

When the sun is high in the sky and stratus clouds are floating lazily in front of it, a car pulls up in the driveway. After that, it takes about an hour for the fire department to arrive and another hour on top of that for Erica and Boyd to be on actual ground again, Erica’s cheeks red and her lips chapped.

The police come after that, Erica and Boyd doing their best to give out statements that won’t get them locked away in a mental institution. They’ve had enough of those for two lifetimes, thanks very much. After it’s all done, when they’re just about ready to get in a taxi and head back to Beacon Hills, something poking out of the sand catches Erica’s attention.

“What’s that,” Boyd asks. He’s got the door of the taxi opened and is waiting for her to climb in first. Erica shrugs, unsure at first until she opens the envelop and pulls out five bank drafts with Derek Hale’s signature on the dotted line.

“Well,” she says, waving the drafts with a grin. “At least we don’t have to worry about cab fare for a while.”

 

**Five Years Later**

The house they end up buying is nothing special, a fixer-upper with two-stories and no basement. There’s four bedrooms in all, two baths, and a spacious backyard for the twins to play lacrosse in. It’s down the street from Boyd’s parents and three blocks from Erica’s mom, a perfect location with a flowerbed out front and a paved walkway.

Erica’s in the kitchen when she hears footsteps coming her way, and she doesn’t even flinch when she feels cold fingers on her shoulder. It’s winter now, after all, and those fingers belong to Boyd, not an age-old creature with an ax to grind. He’s grinning when she turns to look at him, the twins standing in the doorway.

Aiden’s coat seems to be wriggling, so he’s either smuggling something or he’s learned a new trick to communicate that he’s in urgent need of spaghetti. Honestly, it could go either way with that kid, and she’s torn on whether she should toss him a piece of garlic bread or not.

“So,” Boyd says, shuffling his feet. “The boys and I were helping out at the vet earlier, like we do every Tuesday.”

“Uh-huh,” Erica nods. It was a bonding experience for the boys, no one can hang onto anger when they’re handling small animals. It’s science.

“And this puppy was brought in from an abusive home.” And, goddammit, she can already see where this is going. They’ve talked about having a baby but decided it would cost too much if they want to save up a nice amount for the twins’ college funds. Ethan’s suggestion was an animal of some sort, something that won’t take up as much space or fuck up their sleep schedules.

“Please tell me you didn’t pay for a damn dog.”

“We didn’t pay for the dog.”

“I smuggled it out when Deaton wasn’t looking,” Aiden says succinctly. He looks proud about it too and Erica should probably think up some reasons why stealing animals is bad, but Deaton’s an asshole. She’ll let it slide this one time, but she’s going to make the little shit wash the supper dishes for a week as revenge. “It’s a chihuahua.” He brings the little guy out of his jacket, brown with huge eyes and…. Is the dog fucking _smiling_ at her?

“We named him Scott,” Ethan adds.

Later that night, once everyone’s in their pajamas and relaxing in the living room, Erica smiles as she takes in her family. The twins have piled on the couch near the fireplace, Scott snuggled between them and soaking up their combined warmth; Boyd is sitting in the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him as their favorite show comes to a close with the final monologue. It’s perfect, like a storybook ending, and Erica wouldn’t change it for anything.

_“Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And those who walk there, walk together….”_


End file.
